


Of All My Dead

by sinara_smith



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Amnesia, Angst, Arranged Marriage, Drama & Romance, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Kree Politics, Pining, Science Fiction, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-04-07 17:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 55,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14085645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinara_smith/pseuds/sinara_smith
Summary: In the wake of his brother's and Sinara's deaths, Kasius is summoned back to his father's side in the capital and thrown into the world of Kree politics. Meanwhile, millions of miles away, Sinara wakes up, miraculously alive and uninjured in the now abandoned Lighthouse.





	1. Dead and Alive

**Kasius:**

The ship was large enough that he could not feel its movement or hear the sounds of the engine from his quarters. Not that it added much comfort to the space anyways. Though it was a large space, complete with a bed, the desk where he currently sat, and a private washroom, the sterile metal that everything was made of gave the place a distinctly prison-like feeling. Though, not that any other material would have made the situation better, not even the promise of their destination. Not finally returning to Hala, or assuming Faulnak’s place as his father’s right hand, or regaining his reputation. The Lighthouse was an absolute failure; the humans escaped, the Watch was decimated, the time travelers escaped, but even these things were of no consequence to his disconsolation.

_Sinara was dead._

A sharp knock at the door to his quarters pulled Kasius’s attention halfway back to the room and before he could respond, one of his guards, whose name he didn’t know, entered the room. Kasius looked up, finding it difficult even to summon the energy to nod in acknowledgment.

“Sir.” The Watchman began, waiting briefly for a response before continuing when none was forthcoming. “Your father is on the communication system, he is asking for an update on our travels.”

Kasius glowered at the Watchman. “Certainly, you must have that information.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then I just don’t see why you involve me in this.” Kasius dismissed, turning away from him. “I’m far too busy to speak with him at the moment.”

The guard hesitated, and Kasius knew he was considering another protestation, however when he finally spoke, he’d decided against it; “Yes, sir.”

The guard left, shutting the door behind him, Kasius returned his attention to the small piece of glossy paper he held between his right thumb and forefinger. It was a photograph, the only one he’d ever seen printed in an old-fashioned manner— a gift from one of the attendees of an Inhuman auction. She was in the picture, her hand gripping his shoulder for balance, his hand on her waist holding her steady as she leaned over to whisper some message to him. Her expression was as serious as ever, but he had been smiling like a fool, no doubt gleeful and smug at her closeness. He couldn’t tear his eyes away; looking out into a world that she wasn’t part of barely existed in a meaningful capacity. Faulnak had been right; he doubted he was strong enough to survive in the world without her by his side, though only the smallest fraction of it was because of her skills as a warrior.

He just wasn’t meant to be without his soulmate.

**Sinara:**

She awoke slowly, drifting in and out of consciousness for what could have been minutes, hours, or days, it was impossible to know in her disoriented state. When she did manage to peel her eyes open and push herself to a sitting position, she found herself lying on a high table in a small, unfamiliar room with limestone walls. Underneath the white sheet covering her, she was wearing a black tunic and pants. She glanced down at her chest to see a gaping tear in the fabric of her tunic, the material around the hole stiff with what appeared to be dried blood. She pulled the fabric of the tunic aside, looking for an injury and finding no evidence of one— not even a scar. Perhaps she had been dressed in someone else’s clothes; she didn’t remember getting injured.

_But, come to think of it, she didn’t remember much of anything._

She didn’t know where she was, or how she’d gotten there, or what she’d been doing before ending up on the table. She knew to check for injuries; she knew her name, Sinara— just Sinara, born on the two-hundred and fifty-fourth day of the year 2060, on the planet Hala. She thought harder, scanning the room for anything that could give her a clue to where she’d gone after that. She lifted her arms and examined her forearms, gazing at the scars and discolored spots that stood out against the blue background; signs of a life that she’d lived and apparently had no memory of.

She swung her legs off the edge of the table and pushed herself off. The stone floor was freezing against her bare feet, and her legs felt shaky, she must have been asleep for a long time. She crossed to the counter against the wall; it was covered in what appeared to be medical supplies; bandages, needles, a bottle, that upon inspection, she found contained antiseptic solution.

 _Well, at least I remember how to read._ Sinara realized, relieved at the thought.

Also on the counter were some curious objects: a small wooden box containing a half-empty vial of black liquid, a stack of papers covered in crude, colorful drawings, and a silver pistol, blue blood dried on its handle. She picked up the stack of drawings and flipped through them, irritated to find all of them to be indecipherable. She set them down and picked up the pistol instead; it would be of more use to her outside the room.

So, she turned to leave, only to stop short at the dead body on the floor. The figure was male, and Kree like her, but she didn’t recognize him. She noticed he had been killed by a gunshot wound to the head and lifted the pistol in her hand curiously. _What the hell had happened here?_

She stepped over the body and out of the room, finding herself in a long hallway, similar in design to the room she had just left. She followed the hallway to the end where it let out into a large room. Upon entering the room, she found herself standing before a large window, looking out into empty space. She moved, as if in a trance towards the window until she was close enough to touch the glass. She pressed her palm to the cool, solid surface and stared out at the view of asteroids floating and thousands of distant stars set against a dark, purplish expanse.

Perhaps the revelation that she was lost in space should have shocked her, but her only reaction could be summed up by:  _why not?_

She stepped away from the window and glanced around the rest of the room. The place certainly didn’t seem like a spaceship, though logically she couldn’t trust her own thoughts on the matter. This room was furnished with a table, benches, and tables lining the wall; small trees and bushes were growing in pots spread throughout the room. The room had presumably been used for eating, and most of the tables were covered with plates, glasses, and cutlery. Strangely, one of the tables was piled high with weapons; knives, swords, guns similar to the one she held tightly in her right hand, and guns that were much longer. Most notably, like the small room, and the corridor, the room was silent and devoid of life.

Two doors led to more corridors on the other side of the room, one of them led to some sort of control room, filled with monitors displaying what appeared to be security feeds of other rooms, ones that were darker, dirty, and much differently designed than wherever she was. All monitors displayed no signs of life or movement.

Upon closer inspection, other monitors were displaying status reports of water filtration, air filtration, artificial gravity, and temperature controls. Each report was divided into reports of conditions on nearly fifty ‘levels.’ Each monitor displayed the name of her location in the upper left-hand corner: _The Lighthouse, Terra._

She did not know what a lighthouse was and she was unfamiliar with the planet Terra. However it confirmed her suspicions that this was not a spaceship, it was an outpost, on a planet. Of course, that posed the question of how she was able to see space from the window, as though ‘Terra’ was a planet without an atmosphere. Somehow, she knew this was different than Hala though she could not conjure a picture of her home planet to mind.

Sinara wandered out of the control room and back into the grand room, this time going through the opposite door, into a white-walled hallway connecting a series of storage rooms. Past the storage rooms, the hallway widened and branched off; she turned right and followed the hallway only to find that it wound around in a circle, depositing her in her position at the left branch of the hallway. She followed the same path again, this time inspecting the doors in the hallway, finding them to be a series of small bedrooms; they’d been lived in and recently, but now all of them were deserted.

The largest door was set at the end of the curved hallway, significantly apart from the other rooms. Upon inspection, it was a larger bedroom with an attached living room, and washroom. All of these rooms were furnished with elegant, wooden pieces, potted plants, white and gold silk hung from the walls and coordinated with the bedding.

Sinara sat at the edge of the large, low bed, strangely more drawn to it than the shelves or drawers that might contain information. The bed was unmade; the sheets were tangled and pushed to the opposite side of the bed. Upon closer inspection, there was blood on the mattress and pillow, some of the stains were irregular blotches, but a few appeared to be handprints. Unthinking, she reached out, placing her hand over one of them, covering it completely and perfectly, as though she’d put it there herself.

Sinara pulled her hand away again quickly as though she’d been stung, closing her eyes against an onslaught of noisy thoughts inside her head, as though her subconscious was reaching for something just out of its reach. But it wasn’t, the word she hadn’t known she was looking for, appeared- or rather the name.

_Kasius._

Sinara’s eyes snapped open. “Kasius.” She repeated to the empty air, immediately feeling foolish for doing so. She couldn’t place the name to a face, or an event but thinking of it filled her with equal parts of affection, anxiety, and desperation so strong that it was a wonder she’d managed to forget something so powerful. Irrational guilt at her inability to remember them pushed her to rise from the bed and explore the rest of the apartment.

The drawers contained mostly clothing, though it seemed as though someone had hurriedly removed at least half the contents. The clothing that was left behind was made of fine cloth and many sizes too big for her; it was likely men’s clothing. The shelves were decorated with books in a language she didn’t know, and what appeared to be an old technology of some sort, it emitted sound— music, she supposed, when fiddled with. In the living room, dishes and uneaten food littered the table as though whoever had been there had had to evacuate in an unexpected hurry.

The bathroom was in a similar state of disarray; clothes scattered across the floor and more blood smeared over one of the walls leading from the doorway to the shower door. It looked as though someone had dragged their bloodied hand over the wall, but the defined handprint on the shower door was larger than hers. As Sinara studied the handprint, it occurred to her that the abundance of blood trailed through various rooms certainly didn’t bode well for whatever had happened here.

She stooped and picked up one of the garments from the floor, intending to inspect it for bloodstains. It was a tunic, similar to the one she was currently wearing, albeit not torn or bloodied in the slightest. She tossed it back to the ground in disinterest and returned to her spot at the edge of the bed, frustrated that the place had given her no further evidence as to who _Kasius_ was.

She could feel the adrenaline and curiosity seeping out of her, giving way to a strange, empty aching in her chest. She thought it was odd; she had no reason to feel as aggrieved as she did— _for crying out loud,_  she couldn’t remember anything substantive that meant anything to her! Suddenly exhausted, she flipped the stained pillow over and pulled her legs onto the bed. She relaxed into the mattress, pressing her cheek into the pillow more firmly than perhaps she truly needed to and wrapped her arms around herself. As she waited for sleep to come, she allowed herself to contemplate how she would go about finding the owner of the name ringing through her head.


	2. Departure, Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sinara makes a decision and Kasius attends a party seemingly for the express purpose of being insulted.

**Sinara:**

Sinara was pacing the length of the Great Room and carefully reviewing everything she had learned since waking up.

It had been one-thousand and twenty-two hours since she’d woken in the tiny room, one month and eleven days according to her calculations. Because it was hard to know the difference between night and day even with a clock, she had been counting and dividing the hours. It was the twelfth day of her second month, sitting alone in the Lighthouse and she was running out of places to explore.

In her exploration, she’d discovered that the Lighthouse was a large building built into a large rock; if the rock had been a proper planet, she would have called the Lighthouse a ‘bunker.’ But the structure was exposed to open space even on the lowest levels— the one where she had awoken; Level Two. Level One contained a kitchen, holding cells and something called ‘The Crater’ on the computer system, it looked to be an arena of some sort. Level Three was completely abandoned, she had no information whatsoever as to what had been there. The middle levels were laboratories that from what little she could gather had been used in biological experiments, mostly genetics spanning from artificially growing plants and meat to reproductive endeavors. The upper levels were living quarters inferior to the ones she lived in; dirty, cluttered, made of rusting metal, the maze of rooms and hallways seemed endless. The uppermost level of the base was the surface of the rock, she had traveled there once in the elevator but stopped short of opening the top hatch of the elevator upon hearing the deafening, screeching wind outside it. The surveillance footage she found on the computer system confirmed that the outdoors was a wasteland that frequently suffered from something called ‘gravity storms.’

Further exploration of the computer systems showed they had been wiped of all personnel data on the one-hundred and fifty-second day of the year. Any reports recorded on the system came from the last sixty days or so. As a result, she was only living thing appearing on any of the surveillance footage.

She was coming to realize that there was barely anything to do inside this place. 

She still felt the pain in her chest that she’d felt the day she woke up, pain rooted too deeply inside her to be from any physical ailment. It felt like grief even though she had nothing to mourn. It was a different feeling than her frustration, than her fear, or wistfulness; it was more distant and yet just as painful. It was the way one might feel after hearing a sad story; it wasn’t personal grief but painful nonetheless.

_It’s so boring here, and I am spending so much time analyzing every feeling I have._

Sinara thought in disgust, changing the direction of her pacing abruptly as though it would help her push the thought away. She may not know herself too well, but she had discovered that she wasn’t a fan of complicated emotions.

_There’s not much else to think about._

Forty-one days and no information was forthcoming about whoever Kasius was; whoever had left this place had covered their tracks well. She simply could not fathom why they had done everything to hide the information yet had left her alive in that room. But, regardless, she was getting frustrated at knowing nothing more about this ‘Kasius,’ about her circumstances, and about herself.

_It can’t be a logical leap to assume Kasius knows me too._

The thought had been circulating in her mind for nearly three hundred hours. It was strange how she could miss someone she didn’t know, how desperately she wanted to talk to him. Not that she had any idea of what she might say beyond hoping he could tell her what was going on. Nonetheless, she needed to.

_I know the name, perhaps that is enough to track him down. Of course, I don’t know that Kasius is a ‘he’ at all, or if he had another name? Perhaps there are many Kasiuses in the galaxy._

Unfortunately, her options were running thin; there wasn’t enough food here to sustain her indefinitely on the off-chance that she didn’t completely lose her mind from the never-ending silence surrounding her at all times. She was going to leave by the end of the day; Level 24 was a bay for space shuttles, and a few of them had been left behind.

The one she had selected was silver and black, rather small, and vaguely triangular. It had been designed for battle; its wings were heavily equipped with long-range weapons and the cockpit and bathroom were the only rooms on board. The cockpit itself was a narrow space, with two rows of two seats each set behind a curved glass window; the seats in the front row had navigation equipment while the seats in the back row had weapons’ control.

Sinara had spent the morning loading things into the cockpit; food from the kitchens, water to sustain her for quite some time, medical supplies, clothes and bedding stolen from the large quarters where she had been living. There were other odds and ends to be gathered as well; toiletries, a spacewalk suit, and several devices that she thought could be used for communication she had found in the upper levels, and of course some of the weapons she’d found in the Great Room.

Two of the weapons she’d found there were intriguing; small and identical silver metal orbs that she could send flying about by simply thinking about them and moving her fingers indicating the direction she wanted them to go. She’d accidentally discovered the purpose on one of her first days of wandering about while puzzling over them. They were so distinctly different than the other things on the table, but an involuntary movement of her hand had set them in motion. She was proud to say that now she was quite good at manipulating them, despite being bewildered as to how she could possibly control them.

Sinara glanced around the Great Room one last time, trying to remember if there was anything else she was going to need from this place. Coming to the decision that she didn’t, she turned away and began to make her way to the elevator not giving herself the chance to change her mind. She stepped into the elevator and selected Level 24. She kept her mind studiously blank, focusing on the vaguely dizzying sensation of traveling in a fast elevator until the doors opened again, depositing her in the shuttle bay.

The entrance hatch to the spaceship was at the bottom of the shuttle. Sinara had to crawl underneath the shuttle and pull herself through a trapdoor into the cockpit. She maneuvered around the supplies she had stacked around the seats until she had situated herself in the pilot’s seat. She pressed a button on the console and the engine hummed as it turned on, the dashboard screens clicked as they lit up, flickering slightly. It was too loud, probably an outdated model, but it had passed the diagnostic tests she’d performed before the last time she slept, and it would have to do.

She leaned towards the navigation screen, pinching her fingers across it so that it would show a wider view of the area, repeating the motion several times until she noticed a planet on the map outlined with a thin white line which indicated the presence of life. It was a planet far outside of the Terran Solar System by at least ten-thousand jumps and, according to the computer, the nearest jump was one hundred clicks from the Lighthouse.

She selected the planet, called _Contraxia_ according to the disembodied voice of the ship’s computer. It was an tiny, icy, barren planet that was home to various outposts for travelers and known for its nightlife. It was a distinctly unattractive place to visit, but it occurred to Sinara that tired, intoxicated travelers might be forthcoming about all they knew. People, more specifically, males, were apt to bragging under the influences of alcohol.

So, she set the course for Contraxia, watching as the computer mapped the jumps she would have to make and calculated the time it would take to complete the journey.

_20 hours. Two hundred and seven jumps._

She inhaled deeply and gritted her teeth, steeling herself one last time to make the journey. She reached up, and her hand closed around the handle and pulled down, shifting the engine into the gear. The shuttle disconnected from its restraints, lifting just enough and moving slowly enough for her to move through the shuttle bay safely and into the open space beyond.

The Lighthouse looked strange from the outside; a tall building that hung from the curved underside of Terra, the structure was so dark that it was impossible to differentiate between its levels. Sinara forced herself to look away, steering the spaceship around to face the jump point glowing ever-so-faintly in the distance.

**Kasius:**

The music was melancholy and slow, but his dance partner’s incessant chattering was decidedly not. His umpteenth dance-partner of the night prattled on and on, telling some story about his dearly-departed brother at some court party she had attended. Kasius barely understood her beyond that, not out of spite for her for he could have forced himself to listen if only to make passive-aggressive commentary. He simply could not make himself focus on the party, even if it was thrown in his honor, even though it was the first of many reputation-building functions he would have to attend to repair the damage done by Faulnak and his father.

“—and he was never heard from again, now, there were a lot of rumors going around about what your brother did, though most of it should be chalked up to legend, he wasn’t prone to senseless violence like that. But, I wouldn’t have put at least _poisoning_ beyond him.”

Kasius truly had no idea what the woman was talking about, but if she didn’t think ‘Faulnak’ and ‘senseless violence’ belonged in the same sentence, she was clearly a criminally poor judge of character.

“You must miss him terribly, it’s such a tragedy, what happened to him.” The woman continued. “I wish you and your father luck in bringing his assailant to justice.”

Kasius hummed vaguely in response. “Yes, thank you.”

She stopped abruptly, releasing his hand and pulled her hand from his shoulder, making a noise of disgust. “You’re just like they all say, aren’t you? I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure.”

She had disappeared into the crowd before Kasius could even process her words. Perhaps he should have felt guilty, or frustrated with himself at his failure; he couldn’t even remember the woman’s name for crying out loud. He made his way to the edge of the dance floor, snagging a glass from a passing servant to give himself something to do other than stand there, looking a fool. He took a small sip of the drink and surveyed the dance floor, paying special attention to adopt a dignified, confident, stance.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Kasius turned around to find his father, Taryan standing off his left shoulder, wearing a disapproving glare.

“Father.” Kasius acknowledged, turning back towards the crowd.

 _“What are you doing?”_ Taryan hissed, drawing slightly closer. “This is no way to behave; ignoring and offending your guests?”

Kasius closed his eyes briefly, pushing the uncontrolled anger building in his chest down as far as he could, which was not nearly deep enough to stop feeling it. “Sorry, sir.”

“The only reason you’re here is that currently, you’re my only option. If you refuse to do anything honorable for the family, perhaps you’ll do it for yourself. Be better or you’ll not live past the birth of your first son, and I’ll be sure to let everyone know what happened to our outposts at Terra and Gramos thereafter.”

Kasius sighed. “Yes, sir.”

“You act as though its some great tragedy to be pulled from the Terran outpost, it’s disgraceful.”

“Yes, sir.” Kasius acknowledged, unwilling to challenge his ranting. Though fortunately he was spared a longer conversation as one of his father’s advisors, Rastak approached and struck up a conversation with the both of them. He complimented Taryan on another lovely night of festivities and expressed his condolences at the loss of his son.

“And the younger brother, returned from what— ten years? On your special appointment? How are you adjusting to being home?”

Kasius smiled  as graciously as he could muster at his father’s advisor. “I serve at the pleasure of my father; it is only a pity that I’m here under such grievous circumstances.”

Rastak threw him a sympathetic glance before pressing on. “I hear you met the Destroyer of Worlds in your time away.”

“Ah, yes. Such a formidable enemy, with such a terrible power, it’s no discredit to Faulnak’s skills that he was unable to best her.” Kasius responded, gesturing sadly with the hand that held his glass. “We must all consider ourselves lucky that she and her comrades perished in the explosion set by my soldiers, powers like that should never be allowed in such an untamed vessel.”

Rastak nodded seriously. “You and your late brother are a credit to your family, facing her as you did. I must admit, even I quake at the thought of facing her if you’ll pardon the pun.”

Kasius forced an uproarious laugh, copying the one his father let out moments before him. The people in the vicinity paused, before beginning to repeat the joke to each other, all of them following Taryan’s lead and laughing.

“You flatter me, Taryan.” Rastak scoffed, clearly preening at the attention his miserable humor was getting him. When the moment had passed, he returned his attention to Kasius — _alas._

“And what will you do now that you have returned, Kasius?” Rastak asked, a detached tone returning to his voice.

Taryan cleared his throat, announcing to Kasius his intention to take over the conversation, subtly forbidding him from speaking. “He will assume his brother’s place as a commander and as an advisor. And of course, he’ll have a wedding to worry about, Faulnak never put much stock in these things, but I hope his younger brother will see the value of our name and family more clearly.”

Kasius did his best to keep a polite, agreeable smile on his face despite Rastak’s discomfort, his father’s semi-apparent aggression, and the dread building up within him. He’d sooner launch himself back to the Lighthouse and sit there in silence for the rest of his days than think about marriage and family after what had happened there.

After Rastak made his excuses and left, Kasius and Taryan were faced with hearing the excuses of dozens of others wanting to give their condolences, thanks, and farewells to their hosts before returning to their homes.

At long last, Kasius was free to leave and make the walk back to his quarters where he inevitably would spend the next hours unable to sleep as he tried to pull himself together. The little control he’d had over his emotions before was slipping away more and more as the days passed, his focus concentrated solely on trying to prevent it from slipping further. He had little capacity to contemplate his reality. The palace around him, the society, the expectations, even his father’s wishes were finally secondary to an entirely different sort of struggle.

He was so lost in his musings about his mind that he barely noticed they’d reached his quarters and that his guard was holding the door open for him.

“Sir?” His guard prompted, sounding vaguely concerned.

“What are you still doing here?” Kasius demanded, suddenly irritated at the notion of having a guard on hand, constantly following him around. He slammed the door to his quarters shut in the man’s face and stormed further into his quarters.

_What an invasion of privacy! Having some stranger constantly at your heels, observing your every move!_

He fumed, pacing the length of his room with purposeful aggression.

_Could they do nothing other than stand silently by, always on the lookout for danger? Ready to protect you? To do anything for you?_

It made him sick to think of the concept now. He squeezed his eyes shut as though physically warding off the reminder from another part of his brain, the rationalization for why it made him so upset.

“Stop it! Shut up!” He snarled, raising his hands to grip the sides of his head, trying to force the thought away more vigorously.

 _“That’s how you got her killed.”_ A voice inside him whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *frantically googles Guardians of the Galaxy lingo to pull off Sinara's POV* 
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> ~ sinara_smith


	3. New Engagements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sinara goes drinking on an alien planet and Kasius meets a girl, both have disastrous results.

**Kasius:**

Kasius found his quarters uncomfortable. He was always too cold. The rooms were the sort of massive where no amount of furnishing could make them feel full. The ceiling was so high that in the dark, it was impossible to decide where the room ended and the building began. So, of course, they were impossible to heat.

He never slept soundly and could barely sleep three consecutive hours without waking up. His dreams were nonsensical and disturbing. Faulnak, his father, Sinara, and the time-traveling agents weaved in and out of muddled, confused, versions of events that always ended with him standing on the plane from the past. He would always wake up colder than he was before, shivering uncontrollably.

He was used to nightmares, as they were a byproduct of constant fear and it was far from the first episode he’d had in his life. But now, he was completely alone. When he was younger; his mother was always nearby to comfort him and stop Faulnak from mocking Kasius for being afraid of sleeping. After his mother passed and he’d been sent to his father’s outpost, it was Sinara who was there — at first in the next room over, then on the next pillow over, to protect him from danger, even that of his own mind. Now, every time he rolled over absently reaching out for her the empty space beside him was worse than whatever the dream had been.

He couldn’t tell why he continued to get up day after day when his servants came to get him up. Perhaps so he would be able to experience something other than nightmares for a few hours, but hours spent in his father’s court could hardly be considered a vastly better option. He often found himself wondering why the hell he would have ever wanted to come back to this place.

 _What the hell was I thinking?_

But, when the morning came, he got up, dressed and made his way to his father’s conference room where he was expected for a security briefing. No one spoke to him at such meetings despite his prominent position; often they outright insulted him. He knew that at one point in his life, he would have cared about this, it would have driven him to prove them wrong. But he honestly could not bring himself to care about it at all; their opinions were worth less than dust.

The briefing was about the status of various ongoing battles across the galaxy on whichever fronts his father wanted to bring into his empire this week. He didn’t bother to know what they were, by the next meeting they will have schemed up some other plot and the situation would be entirely different. Kasius didn’t care to argue the drawbacks of a widespread expansion strategy either, it had hardly made a difference even before he had failed his father.

As the members of the security counsel dispersed, his father pulled Kasius aside and informed him that he wanted to see him in his study within the hour. Undoubtedly for another scolding but of course, the familiar fear of Taryan’s wrath was nowhere inside of him. Everything meant nothing and was nothing, but Kasius went anyway because he had nothing else to do, it wasn’t as though he was inclined to spend his free time in the city.

His father was pacing in the study when he arrived. It was another white-walled room with a soaring ceiling and too few furnishings to adequately fill the space, a room that the slightest sound echoed through.

“You’ve finally decided to show up.” Taryan scoffed, not turning to see who had entered.

Kasius felt a slight flicker of annoyance given that he’d come straight to the study from the security council, though not enough to push the point. “Sorry, sir. What do you need?”

“I’ll cut to the chase, when Faulnak died he left behind his betrothed, her family is eager for her to marry, I’m eager to keep the alliance. You’ll be taking Faulnak’s place in the partnership.”

The news didn’t shock him and barely hurt to hear, the only surprising thing was how numb he felt to the concept. He had honestly expected to at least experience some dread at the idea rather than numb reluctance.

 _Of course, why not another terrible thing? This might as well happen_. Kasius thought, his stream of consciousness taking a sardonically morbid tone at; a _t least he promised to kill me as soon as a had a family, so I doubt I’ll have to worry about it for long._

“Yes, sir.”

Taryan looked nearly surprised at the acquiescence. “You’ll be dining with her this afternoon; her name is Majia. Try not to be too pathetic.”

Kasius nodded seriously, most of his focus on appearing attentive rather than actually listening to his words.

“Dismissed,” Taryan stated, waving him away.

The movement of Kasius’s guard at his shoulder spurred him into action, and he followed the man out of the room and down several corridors. He had given no directions and briefly wondered if they were wandering aimlessly, not that it mattered, at least he wouldn’t be asleep if he was walking about. Though, as it turned out, they weren’t wandering aimlessly, the guard took him to the gardens despite the fact that it wasn’t a very nice day. The sky was an angry grey, it was drizzling, and the air was hot and damp. It was the point in the year when the flowers were no longer in bloom; the garden was a sea of large green and blue leaves that held little beauty or interest.

He followed his guard down the covered passageways carved from the same limestone as the palace that wound through the garden until they reached a pavilion. In the pavilion, a small table had been set up and set for two people, though whoever he was supposed to be meeting had yet to show. His guard pulled out one of the chairs and waited for him to sit before retreating to the edge of the pavilion behind him.

Kasius stared at his hands intertwined on the table, searching his mind for something to think of; something to fill the empty space inside him. Nothing struck his fancy to think about; he was too drained from the events of the morning.

He wasn’t sure what exactly happened. Next, one moment he was absolutely fine, focused on the pattern of his intertwined fingers. The next, a sharp pain ricocheted through his spine from a point in the middle of his back, and he had to suppress the urge to cry out, then a similar pain in his knees and forearms and left cheekbone. If he hadn’t known better, he would say it felt like a blunt force to each area. But unlike a blunt force injury, the pain was gone too quickly; he already felt completely normal.

He looked over at his guard who was gazing out over the gardens, completely unaware of what was happening. There was no one else around, no one and nothing that could have caused it.

It wasn’t as though he didn’t recognize the phantom sensation, but he must indeed be going crazy because there was no conceivable reason for him to feel it now. He let his head fall forward into his hands, suddenly feeling exhausted, which he vaguely hoped was the source of the hallucination.

_I’m doing much worse than I thought._

“My sisters warned me you were a bit strange, but I must admit, I didn’t expect you to be falling asleep when I first met you.”

Kasius looked up to see the woman, — Majia, standing at the other side of the table. She was rather short and wore black trousers and a shirt underneath a silver, shimmering cloak of some sort. Her hair was done up, and powdery, gold makeup formed a band across her face around her eyes. She radiated dangerous confidence and carried several unconcealed knives strapped to her belt.

“Hello,” Kasius responded, trying to infuse his words with excitement, from her expression it seemed quite clear that he had not been successful. He grimaced and continued. “Please, sit.”

She did, continuing to look at him with a blank, unsympathetic look. “Thank you.”

“How do you do?” Kasius prompted breaking the tense silence.

“Hmm, all right, I suppose. I’m quite busy trying to decide whether or not I should keep you alive after the wedding night.”

Her voice wasn’t exactly threatening and was more contemplative than anything. He understood, at one point in his life, he’d gone about making his own place in Kree society in similar ways. If anything, she seemed extremely straightforward, confident enough in her prowess that it didn’t matter whether or not he was expecting an attack.

“Fair enough.” He replied.

 

**Sinara:**

Contraxia was not to Sinara’s liking; it was too cold, the ground was icy, gusts of wind swept across the outpost incessantly blowing snow into her face. Every building was made of old, rusting metal.

People gathered in and in between the buildings of the outposts, drinking, yelling, flirting, and worse. Most of them looked different and strange; there were a few Kree, like her, but also bright yellow humanoids, with blue hair, various collections of red beings though each group was formed differently. There was even someone who bore a shocking resemblance to the potted plants at the Lighthouse, simply walking around. She had never seen so many different species of beings in one place, or so she thought, she couldn’t actually remember seeing anyone. Many of them had yelled at her as she made her way to her current location, but fell silent at her glare.

Sinara wove her way through the crowd of people between the door and the back of the nightclub, carefully avoiding the groups who were fighting or dancing and keeping her eyes fixed on the floor. Though looking down was partially to avoid conversation before she had fully formed a plan, it was largely to avoid staring at the glaring neon lights that seemed to cover every building at the outpost— they were absolutely blinding.

She reached the back of the nightclub and sat at the long counter where a handful of others were conversing and drinking. She unfastened her cloak and draped it over the back of her stool whose seat was so high that she had a difficult time climbing into it. She glanced furtively at the people sitting around her, to her right there was a group of three people, they had no hair, and their skin matched the color of the snow outside, a bluish white, their eyes were entirely black. To her left, there was a lone woman with long dark hair like hers and bright, orange skin, designs done in what appeared to be blue makeup surrounded her eyes. The woman’s hands had seven fingers each, and she wore fine, colorful clothes that stood out against the general uniform of black, brown, and occasional deep blue or red that most of the others adhered to.

Someone cleared their throat, and she turned away from the orange-skinned woman, to see the bar-servant, another woman with dark brown skin and long dark hair pushing a cup towards her.

Sinara frowned at her and shook her head, glancing at the people next to her, but the woman smiled and pointed to the second white alien on her right.

“It’s perfectly safe to drink; I made it.” The woman told her.

Sinara nodded despite having no idea what was going on, completely caught off guard at being spoken to. _Had she ever talked to anyone?_ She’d only heard her own voice once or twice that she could remember. She took the cup from the woman, holding it tightly but not drinking from it. She leaned towards the group of white aliens, immediately making eye contact with the second one.

“Thank you.” She said uncertainly, raising her voice to be heard over music and chatter.

It smiled at her and nodded. “What’s your name?”

She paused, suddenly unsure if she should tell it her real name, but of course, she didn’t know any other names to go by. “Sinara.”

The three white aliens exchanged a significant glance that she could not decipher.

“Nice to meet you.” The first one said finally. “What brings you here?”

“I’m looking for someone.” She replied, her head beginning to feel clearer, as though something in her knew how to handle the situation, even though she had no idea what that was going to be.

The aliens exchanged another look before the third one leaned over. “People who come here probably don’t want to be looked for.”

“I’m sure he’s not here.” Sinara commented, then in an effort to keep up the conversation: “What brings _you_ here?”

They exchanged yet another glance, though this time it was a lewd glance. “Well, we’re looking for _something_.” The second one said, causing the other two to laugh heartily.

Sinara fell silent, she was a little perturbed at their frankness and beginning to think that they probably knew nothing useful to her. The group beside her continued to laugh as though they’d said something extraordinarily witty with their last remark. She began to turn away from them— clearly, the conversation wasn’t going anywhere.

“Leaving so soon?” one of them called out, she wasn’t sure which. “After we bought you the drink.”

The first one, nearest to her, grabbed her waist, trying to swivel her chair back towards them. Sinara’s hand flew to her calf so quickly that she knocked her drink across the bar causing a few other patrons to cry out indignantly. But it was all background noise to the sudden, furious pounding in her head brought on by the adrenaline and her spiking heart rate. She pulled out the knife she’d hidden in her boot and brought it to hover near the alien’s neck as her chair stopped in front of it. “Well, no one asked you to do that.” She snarled, pushing the knife the rest of the way to it's throat. A small trickle of black blood leaked from the place where her blade met flesh.

Despite this, the alien’s companions were laughing again. Though she couldn’t imagine what about this was funny to them, she was going kill their friend.

“So, its true what everyone says about Kree women.” The third one guffawed, his tone suggesting that he was speaking to something other than fighting.

“You should be more scared, I’ve seen her kill men for far less than what you’ve done.”

Sinara looked around in surprise to find the orange woman she’d noticed earlier, standing at her shoulder.

“Come on, Sinara, we’ve been over this, a good wing woman doesn’t start bar fights.”

The woman grabbed her arm and pushed it down, drawing the knife away from the first white alien.

Sinara dropped her arm but kept a hold on her knife, swiveling her chair around again to face the orange woman who reassumed her seat on Sinara’s left.

“What’s going on?” Sinara blurted out. “I don’t know you! What’s a wing woman?”

The other woman looked taken aback. “How do you not— never mind, I’m Raha, and it seemed to be that you needed a friend.”

“I could have handled it.”

“I don’t know how things go on Hala, but here it’s generally looked poorly on if you kill someone in public.” Raha explained quietly.

Sinara sighed, not wanting to fight again, it would certainly ruin her chances of getting information out of anyone. “Thank you.”

Raha nodded approvingly. “You’re welcome. But what on earth got it in your head that this was a good idea? No offense, but I get the feeling you’ve never been outside of what, your Kree military compound?”

Sinara shrugged. “I’m looking for someone; I thought someone here might know something.”

“As an escort, I talk to a lot of the people who come through here.” Haha continued. “Try me.”

“I can’t remember anything but a name.”

Raha frowned. “You must be an ineffective spy.”

“I don’t think I’m a spy,” Sinara replied bluntly.

Raha’s eyes widened. “You can’t remember _anything_ but the name?”

“Nothing about my life.”

“No wonder you’re so helpless.”

Sinara fought off the urge to roll her eyes; she certainly wasn’t helpless, she’d nearly killed a man.

“So how do you know who to look for?”

“It’s the only thing I can remember that means something to me.”

“What does it mean to you?”

Sinara considered the question for a moment, she, of course, knew exactly why it meant something— but it felt strange to say to about an unknown person. “I love it.” She said.

Raha nodded, waiting a moment for her to continue before prompting. “Well, spill! Who is it?”

“Kasius.” Sinara said, absently considering how irritating the phrase 'spill' was. 

Raha blinked in surprise, drawing back in surprise which Sinara took as a sign that she recognized the name. Sinara stared at her, willing her to speak up about whatever she knew.

“I only know of one Kasius.” Raha began carefully. “Heir to the Kree Emperor, and from what I’ve heard, he’s a bit of a disaster.”

Sinara had to remind herself that it was unreasonable to be offended at the assertion.

“He was banished to Terra the destroyed planet for nearly fifteen years with other Kree criminals. Apparently, he screwed up some big military endeavor, completely decimated his family’s authority.”

Sinara was only half listening to everything she said after ‘Terra,’ that couldn’t be a coincidence. Many things didn’t add up, first and foremost, how had she ended up on Terra and why had she stayed behind when he and the rest of his delegation of criminals had left? Was she also a criminal?

“— Older brother died recently. Apparently, someone finally beat him in battle. Last I heard from some Kree soldier passing through, probably last month, Kasius had returned to Hala to assume his place as his father’s heir.”

“He’s on Hala?” Sinara asked, her monotonous speech cracking in her relief. A small bubble of hope was beginning to form in her chest, momentarily silencing the concerns and unanswered questions in her mind.

The expanding feeling in her chest seemed to push her from her chair, driving her towards a new destination. A single thought emerged in her mind, bouncing and echoing through her thoughts, the intensity of it increasing with every passing millisecond.

I _have to go_.

“Thank you.” She managed to tell Raha, even in her hurry to depart.

Raha smiled kindly at her but seemed disappointed as she asked: “You're leaving now?”

_Stop holding me up!_

“I have to know,” Sinara explained. “Thank you for your help.”

“Anytime,” Raha said, and Sinara turned to leave. In her periphery, she saw Raha slide off her chair too.

“You’re sweet; I hope you find him someday.” Raha continued, following Sinara as she made her way to the door, shoving people aside carelessly. “In the meantime, sorry about this.”

Sinara barely had the chance to turn around before a blinding, simultaneously chilling and searing bolt of pain spasmed up and down her spine, emanating from a point in the middle of her spine. The last thing she was aware of was her cheek hitting the floor before losing consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> -Cartwen


	4. The Phantom Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sinara spends quality time with enemies of the Kree empire and Kasius finds a new ally.

**Sinara:**

Sinara opened her eyes. She was in another small room, this time the room appeared to be a bedroom. She felt drained, and every muscle in her body ached dully. The skin underneath her left eye was swollen where she’d hit her face when she fell.

_Where am I?_

She glanced at her surroundings, twisting her neck in every possible direction despite the pain that came with the movement. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of blackened and rusting metal and the only furnishings were a mismatched bedroom set; a small cot with an uncovered, dirty-looking mattress, a night table, and a bureau in the room in from of her. She was sitting on a beat-up wooden armchair, her legs crossed underneath her, arms resting lightly on the armrests. There were no windows, and the door to the room must have been behind her; the one spot she could not see.

She was unrestrained, but when she tried to straighten her legs and lift her arms, she found some force was holding her in place. It wasn’t that she was frozen, she could move her head, twist her arms, and lean forward, but something invisible was keeping her from moving too far out of the chair.

 _How clever of my captors._ Sinara thought bitterly, trying to ignore her rapidly increasing heart rate.

At least this time she woke remembering where she had been before the room; she’d been at the nightclub on Contraxia. She was there to find out who Kasius was, she had spoken to Raha, and she had been trying to go to Hala when Raha attacked her. Now she knew that she was somehow important to something happening in the galaxy. She knew the heir to the Kree throne, probably well, she had been at a prisoner’s outpost, so presumably, she had done something rather awful and didn’t get on with the Kree emperor. But if she was important, she didn’t need to panic.

_They’re not going to kill me._

_They want to know something._

_Know what?_

_I don’t know anything!_

_All right, they might kill me._

_But, I’m good in a fight, I just need to figure out how they’re keeping me in this chair._

_And, perhaps I’m good for ransom money. I could be a liability for all the Kree Imperial Army knows._

_They're not going to kill me._

The door creaked open behind her and judging by the footsteps two people entered the room. Sinara tried fruitlessly to catch a glimpse of them as they came through the door, but it was for naught, both of her captors circled her to stand between her chair and the bed. She recognized one of them instantly as the first white alien from the nightclub. It took her a moment longer to realize the second captor was Raha, though she was no longer wearing what Sinara presumed had been a disguise. Without her orange and blue makeup, Raha was as pale as her partner and wore similar black clothing.

“Good morning, Sinara,” Raha said, her voice cordial and unthreatening, despite the clearly sinister situation.

“What am I doing here?” Sinara demanded flatly.

Raha’s partner stepped closer to Sinara, not touching her but leaning down so that his face was very close to her’s.

“Not as smart as you are pretty? No one ever taught you to be careful of strangers? Though I can’t blame you, I was almost fooled by Raha too, she’s so good at it don’t you think?” He spoke slowly, almost lazily in the voice of a man who was sure he’d won.

Sinara stared back at him blankly.

“Let’s be honest now, Sinara. One doesn’t just forget everything. Now, why did you come here from the Lighthouse when we know your master returned to Hala? What’s he having you do?”

“Don’t know,” Sinara responded. “How do you know about the Lighthouse?”

Raha’s apparently nameless partner drew back. “We’ve been watching it for some time. Tell us why the Terrans evacuated to the surface, why did you stay?”

“I don’t know.”

Raha’s partner turned to Raha, beckoning her closer.

Raha circled to Sinara’s left side drawing a syringe with a large needle from her cloak. Sinara flinched away from it instinctively, immediately cursing herself for the gesture of weakness.

“You’ll give Hast any information he wants with this.”

_That was his name; Hast._

Sinara didn’t even bother reminding them that she didn’t know anything, nor would she have been given a chance; Raha jabbed the needle into the base of her neck. It felt like being stabbed, a blunt force followed by pain so intense that it made her nauseous, she looked down to see blood trickling from where the needle had gone in. Whatever was in the syringe felt like ice entering her bloodstream; a sharp and achy cold that ran through every vein and artery in seconds. Sinara gasped at the pain, swallowing down a full-on shriek at the sensation, it was so intensely unpleasant that she barely noticed Raha pull the needle out of her neck.

“Where are Taryan’s forces concentrated?” Hast demanded, pulling at the fabric of her shirt and raising her halfway out of her seat. The fabric pulled tight over the wound left by the syringe, forcing Sinara to swallow another pained gasp.

“I don’t know who that is,” Sinara replied, unduly proud that he voice didn’t waver as she said it.

Her entire body was beginning to tremble, trying to fight off the cold spreading through her from the inside, out. Hast dropped her against her chair and pulled out a knife, he held the tip of the knife against her chest, just below her left shoulder as he kept talking.

“The Kree emperor, idiot. You were his son’s whore for fifteen years, and you know nothing?”

“No,” Sinara replied, her voice still steady. “Don’t call me that again.”

Hast drove the knife into her flesh, enough to leave a shallow cut. “Or what? You’ll glare at me?”

Sinara glared at him. “Perhaps I’ll sic the Kree Imperial Army on your people.”

“I think you’re sorely overestimating how much you mean to your commanders, girl.”

“How would I know?” Sinara taunted this time with more force behind her words.

_Why can’t they see I know nothing?_

“They don’t care about you, why else would your beloved Kasius leave you to rot in that prison?”

Sinara flinched as he drove the knife a little deeper into her shoulder. “Perhaps.”

“Did you think you’d be welcomed back after being sent to the Lighthouse? There’s nothing left for you on Hala, tell us what they’re planning?”

Sinara said nothing as Hast pushed the knife deeper into her shoulder until it met the underside of her shoulder blade and could go no further.

“Where are Taryan’s forces concentrated?” Hast repeated, drawing the knife out at an agonizingly slow speed. “Why have they abandoned Terra?”

Sinara continued to say nothing, all her focus going to keeping her expression impassive, even when Hast struck her new shoulder wound with the blunt edge of the knife, adding further insult to the area.

“Come on, Sinara, don’t be this way.” Hast urged. “What have the Kree ever done for you, their foot soldier? Banished you to a far-off outpost? Abandoned you there? Was it them who wiped your memories, leaving you only able to remember what? Something you’re destined to miss for the rest of our life? The most painful thing to ever happen to you?”

As Hast spoke, he pressed his knife into the space between her each of her right ribs, never leaving a deep enough cut to damage her lung, but leaving a series of painful scrapes.

Sinara squeezed her eyes shut, finally giving up on appearing unfazed. The knife was easy to ignore over the painful cold surging through her veins and the other injuries she already had, but it was not easy to ignore the words Hast spoke. It was as though he was here to vocalize her own questions and anxieties about what had happened at the Lighthouse.

“I can’t help you.” Sinara managed. “You have to believe me.”

A series of violent convulsions ran through her whole body, protesting against the ice running through her veins.

Hast stopped trailing his knife down her side causing Sinara to force her eyes open. The light was suddenly painful in her eyes. Raha had pulled Hast aside where they were conferring; Sinara couldn’t make out much of their conversation between her headache, her shudders, and their low voices but from what she could gather, they were planning on using her as bait to draw in higher ranking Kree soldiers to interrogate. Raha and Hast need only pretend she knew something important for the army to come.

Hast pointed some sort of controller at her and pressed the button on it, releasing whatever force was holding her to the chair.

She slumped forwards, every muscle too weak from the cold to even try to stop her fall.

Raha and Hast caught her before she pitched forward onto the floor and dragged her to the cot. Neither were very gentle about moving her and tossing her onto the mattress, and every slightest movement sent waves of pain through her so intense that she blacked out before she had even come to a rest on the mattress.

**Kasius:**

Kasius awoke later than the previous day, sunlight streaming into through the large window. Today, there would be no Security Council meeting as most generals would be off planet for negotiations with some enemy force or another. They had so many enemies at this point; Kasius couldn’t keep track of them if he tried.

But, fortunately, no Security Council meant he would spend the morning in his quarters, reading over security reports and trying to decide on what strategy would best please his father in preparation for their afternoon meeting. Kasius dressed before moving through into his living space where servants had already set out breakfast and a large stack of papers at the table for him to look through.

“Finally,”

Kasius whirled around to find Majia sitting in one of his chairs in the room behind him.

From her loud bark of laughter, he assumed that his expression of shock looked quite foolish.

He forced himself to adopt a neutral expression which only made her look more amused.

“What are you doing here?” He demanded careful to sound bored and annoyed with her.

“I came for breakfast. You could sound more impressed; I actually did a lot to dodge my chaperone.”

“Well done,” Kasius replied with no more enthusiasm. “Though, you’ve doubtless realized that this will only create more trouble for my reputation.”

Majia got up and began to move towards the breakfast table. “Two things, darling; I don't care about your reputation that much. And second, as the emperor's _son_ , any perceived relations you have are insignificant."

Kasius rolled his eyes but decided it wasn't worth the trouble and joined her at the table, sitting across from her, as far away as he could get while maintaining propriety.

“But why come here? Still trying to decide my fate?"

"Well, yes. But I make the other members of your father's court uncomfortable." Majia gestured at her atypical get-up. "Your father must have some regrets about how I turned out."

"And yet, it wouldn't even be the worst deal he ever made," Kasius remarked sharply. "He's an idiot."

Majia gave him a pointed look. "Stop being threatened by him then."

“It would be wise of you to form an alliance with Taryan,” Kasius remarked. “Both of you want me dead.”

“Are you strategizing your own death?” Majia asked, mirth in her voice. She poured juice into a glass and took a small sip of it, observing him. “Are you that confident in your abilities as a fighter or are you just that broken up about marrying me?”

“You don’t want to be married to me,” Kasius stated.

“Let’s say you’re not my type and you have few redeeming qualities. But, I’d like to be empress. But you don’t, you don’t want any of this, do you?”

“I would exchange all of this for my life on Terra in a heartbeat,” Kasius confessed, pulling the pitcher of juice towards him and busying himself with pouring it into a glass.

“You loved that hunk of rock that much?”

“No,” Kasius responded fully intending to explain the statement. But before he could even open his mouth to continue, something struck him in the neck. He whipped his head to the side, hand jerking up to grab the spot where he’d been hit. But, no one was there, and nothing had hit him; Majia was sitting in her seat, staring at him as though he were absolutely mad. Yet, the spot of the base of his neck still stung with the strange, inexplicable pain.

“Kasius, what’s wrong with you?” Majia asked trepidatiously, beginning to rise from her chair and walk towards him.

Kasius stood so quickly that his chair toppled over behind him. “Nothing, excuse me for a moment.”

He began to make his way back towards his bedroom, making it only a few steps before a cold feeling began to spread through his whole body as though his very blood were turning to ice. The sensation was so strange and excruciating that it forced him to stumble into the sofa and sit down, resting his head in his hands.

“What the hell?” Majia asked, following him to the couch and crouching down in front of him.

Kasius’s head shot up, the thought that seized him momentarily pushed the pain to the side. He grabbed Majia’s shoulders, pulling her slightly closer. “You poisoned me!”

Kasius was weak from the pain and Majia pulled away quite easily. “Nonsense. I’ve not married you yet!”

_Of course, how paranoid, how foolish. You must relax. You're doing this to yourself._

But, before Kasius could convince himself of this, the horrible pain was back, this time in his left shoulder, like someone was slowly driving a blade through him. He couldn’t stop himself from crying out in pain.

“Stop it!” Majia snapped as she stood and pushed him back against the sofa, holding him steady with a hand on both shoulders. “Do you need a doctor?”

She kept talking, asking him a million questions, but it was foggy background noise to the cold burning inside him and the stabbing sensation.

Finally, with a last wrench of blinding pain, the phantom knife had been pulled from his chest. He exhaled in relief as the feeling dulled somewhat only to be unpleasantly surprised by a phantom blow to the phantom injury, causing him to groan in pain.

Majia was still talking, but he could just make out the rising pitch of her voice. Every sense dulled in comparison to his screaming nerves. 

He thought it might be subsiding; he was shaking and felt smaller stinging pains tracing down his right ribcage, but he was regaining control.

And then, all at once he was fine. He was able to sit up and brush Majia off him, brushing a hand across his damp forehead.

“I’m all right.”

Majia looked at him skeptically, checked the clock on her wrist and then looked back at him. “Ten minutes of whatever that was, I seriously doubt you’re all right.”

She looked sympathetic, sitting on the low table before the couch. “You must be worried.”

Kasius blinked. “Worried?”

“I’ve only ever met a few people like us before,” Majia said gently. ‘The pain isn’t easy, but feeling it isn’t the worst part, it’s worrying about them afterward.”

“This isn’t phantom pain.” Kasius snapped, brushing her aside, completely unwilling to discuss such personal matters with her.

“I got them a lot. My soulmate had something wrong with her; she was sick her whole life. She’s been dead for three years now, and I almost miss the pains.”

Kasius was momentarily too surprised to speak. “Sinara is dead too.” He finally managed.

Majia’s eyes narrowed. “You were mistaken, then.”

“No. It was her.” Kasius insisted, vaguely remembering several foolish endeavors of his youth, trying to see if Sinara felt pain when he did.

He remembered being frustrated that she was as skilled as she was at hiding everything. She’d slipped up once, their second night at the Lighthouse, too exhausted to contain a short, pained, exclamation when he’d inadvertently cut his hand on a scrap of rusty metal. They’d never discussed it, but the look of understanding they’d exchanged immediately after was as fresh in his mind as the room in front of him.

Majia sighed, not seeming to believe him. “How long has it been?” She wanted to know, her voice pulling him from his thoughts.

“Six weeks,” Kasius responded distractedly. “It’s an invention of my own mind. Much like you, I would that I was still able to feel it.”

“Did she die at the Lighthouse?” Majia asked gently.

Kasius nodded slowly. “Sinara was a soldier; she wanted to save us from those who would threaten our existence and control on Terra. In her third fight with the Destroyer of Worlds, she lost.”

Majia considered his words for a long moment before speaking, a melancholy note to her voice as she did. “I suppose we have something in common now.”

“I suppose you’ll not kill me then.” Kasius finally raised his eyes to look at her. “Pity.”

“We’ll have to survive until our own time, together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> -Cartwen


	5. The Tip-Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kasius hosts an engagement party and Sinara steals some stuff.

**Kasius:**

Majia complained about her formal clothes at any chance she got, in the brief intervals between the parade of Kree nobility coming to congratulate them on the engagement. They were positioned on a dais overlooking the floor where their subjects danced, gossiped, and tried to be discreet in their schemes and trysts. At another time, Kasius would have mocked the courtiers and their carelessness, but it was difficult enough to be a gracious host. No thanks to Majia who had no qualms about mocking the people who approached them.

“Will you stop it?” Kasius hissed, grabbing Majia’s arm and pulling her towards the back of the platform. “You will make us the most hated rulers in history.”

Majia yanked her arm away from him, not even trying to conceal it from all those probably staring at the exchange. “I won’t be weak like you are. They respect me because I don’t kiss the ground at their feet.”

“Perhaps you could try for some diplomacy?” Kasius snapped. “Or just shut up for once in your life?”

“Hilarious, coming from you.”

Someone coughed pointedly behind them; Majia and Kasius whirled around in unison, coming face-to-face with Taryan’s advisor, Rastak. Rastak looked slightly embarrassed at having interrupted them.

“Arguing already over wedding arrangements?” He asked, awkwardly but good-naturedly.

“Oh, please no,” Majia replied.

Rastak laughed uncertainly before drawing closer to Kasius, a serious look on his face.

“Sir, I’m afraid this isn’t a congratulatory visit, an urgent matter has come up.”

Kasius looked at Rastak carefully, confused as to why he was being consulted instead of his father. “Can I refer you to my father, he would certainly not appreciate not being consulted on a military matter?”

Rastak shook his head. “This is an odd matter, about your position on Terra. Are you quite sure the Lighthouse was abandoned?”

“Of course,” Kasius responded, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Why? What news is there?”

Rastak produced a tablet from a pocket inside his robes and held it out to Kasius. “A report, from Contraxia, two Praxian rogues caught a Kree soldier previously stationed at the Lighthouse. My subordinates consider the threat to be credible, a possible intelligence leak that could threaten current endeavors.”

“There’s no credibility to it; everyone returned with my delegation. No one would have wanted to stay.” He told Rastak. “Who do they claim is with them?”

“Your former Watch commander, Sinara.”

Kasius froze for a moment, something shut away deep inside him cracked and bled grief, clouding his mind. He may have lost his balance for the shock of the statement if it weren’t for Majia’s tight grip on his elbow.

“Your advisors think that a dead woman is a threat?” Majia asked sharply when Kasius said nothing. “The level of incompetence is beyond concerning.”

“Sir, the Praxians offered proof, perhaps there is some chance that she recovered?”

“The Destroyer of Worlds put a spear through her chest.” Kasius snapped, his voice raising enough that guests nearby turned to stare at them. “I stood by her side for hours while my doctors tried to help her. If there was any probability of recovery, I assure you I would know about it; I would never have left her on the Lighthouse if I thought there was one. How dare you suggest that I—”

“What proof do you have?” Majia interrupted, digging her fingernails into his flesh to silence him.

Rastak hesitated a moment and glanced nervously at Kasius until he nodded his assent. Rastak brought up a picture of a spaceship on the tablet, holding it out to Kasius and Majia.

“This ship arrived on Contraxia about ten hours before we received the tip, we’ve confirmed that the ship was part of the inventory from the Lighthouse. Do you recognize it?”

Kasius nodded. “It was an old model; my Watchmen had no use for it. I advise you to ignore the intelligence; this is a setup.”

“Excuse us,” Majia told Kasius, turning him slightly away from Rastak so they could talk privately. “You should look into it.”

“Why?”

“Someone is trying to fool us, and probably to undermine you,” Majia said, her tone suggesting that he should understand her train of thought. Her hand tightened on his forearm as she continued to speak. “Show them how the Kree Empire treats liars."

“She’s been gone for months, Majia. Even if through some miracle she survived her injuries; she would certainly have contacted us and would be in no condition to transport herself to a planet she’s never been to. It could not more clearly be a trap!” Kasius argued. “I won’t send our warriors into a trap.”

“It’s not a trap if you know about it.” 

Kasius sighed, giving in to his curiosity into the matter.“Very well.” He turned back to Rastak. “Gather a small delegation; we’ll leave tonight.”

“Wonderful mission, rescuing this dead girl,” Majia remarked drily, garnering horrified stares from Rastak and Kasius. “Apologies. You must miss her.”

“You’re coming, sir?” Rastak asked trepidatiously. 

“Naturally, I should think having the leading expert on the Lighthouse with you will certainly be to your advantage as we will be flying half-blind into a trap,” Kasius explained, strangely feeling more like himself than he had in months. “Dismissed, Rastak.”

 

**Sinara:**

She came to with a dull headache, and she kept her eyes closed against the throbbing pain emanating from the back of her skull. But her eyelids were an insufficient defense against the assault of the fluorescent lights on her nerves. She felt about with her hands, grasping at the mattress and bed frame and trying to discern if she was still in the same room where Hast and Raha had tortured her. Her whole body protested at the slight movements, but she was getting used to the pain.

She forced herself to roll onto her stomach so that she would be able to bury her face into the mattress, blocking out the light in front of her eyelids. Whatever they had injected her with had worn off but the cell was icy and the uncovered mattress retained only a little of her warmth.

She wasn’t afraid, exactly, she didn’t have the mental capacity for fear over her confusion, exhaustion, and loneliness. The past few weeks had been a long series of unanswered questions grating away at her trust in everything, including herself. With no context, she couldn’t very well trust her decisions or what anyone else was telling her.

Pressure welled in her chest and throat, her eyes warmed and stung with tears building up behind her eyelids. A ragged and uncontrolled sob burst out of her, before she clamped her mouth shut, swallowing against the lump in her throat.

She couldn’t afford to lose her composure now; she had to hold out until the Imperial Army came to take her off her captors’ hands. Though, of course, there was no evidence that they’d be any help. It occurred to her that returning to them was likely not in her best interest. The Lighthouse had been a place for prisoners by what her captors told her, and she had been left there while everyone left. They had even wiped her memories. It seemed likely that they had never intended for her to escape. It was also unlikely that they’d rescue her if they’d gone to such lengths to ensure she would have nothing to give enemies.

It occurred to her for the first time that Kasius was not someone to run towards, but perhaps someone to run from. Perhaps she remembered him because he was someone she used to be fond of, perhaps something had gone wrong, perhaps he’d even been the one to do this to her. If he’d been trying to torture her, it was, without question, a highly successful strategy. Her questions swirled around in her head, seeming to form the stabs of pain in her skull as they bounced around without answer, mixing with the insinuations of her captors. Maybe Kasius didn’t miss her or think about her. Maybe she’d been wrong in her faith that he was something trustworthy, a place where she’d be safe. Maybe he was glad to be rid of her and didn’t feel the wistful sadness when something brought her to mind.

Of course, she still had to go to Hala, she still had to find him and to find answers, but she’d do it on her own terms, she had a ship and weapons. If necessary, she could fight her way out punish those who had hurt her. She just needed to get out of here first.

She forced herself to roll over and sit up even as the headache and the aching in her muscles fought her every step of the way. She had to rest for a brief moment, pulling her knees to her chest and leaning against them as she caught her breath. Her stomach churned at the sudden motion, and she swallowed hard against the bile rising up in her throat. When she had recovered, she swung her legs over the edge of the mattress and pushed herself to standing.

Without the support of the bed, she nearly fell over, stumbling into the wall on the other side of the room. She stood there for some time, her right shoulder and temple pressed to the freezing metal, listening to the howling wind and clamor of voices outside on the streets of the outpost. It occurred to her that the metal wall was relatively flimsy, a strong enough blow would dent and eventually puncture it; which would have been useful if she had any idea how high up she was. Not that she was in any condition to fight her way out, out of practice and injured as she was.

Sinara glanced around the room, searching for something that could be used to strike the wall. The furnishings were either partially rotting wood or some sort of plastic and certainly would be insufficient against the wall. If she had a metal pole, even a gun, operated properly could have broken through, but of course, they’d taken everything she’d had on her when she’d left her ship.

The realization hit her so suddenly that she jerked upright, away from the wall. A terrible idea by all accounts when the dizziness hit her; she stumbled a few feet until she caught herself on the chair she’d been interrogated in and proceeded to vomit bile on the floor at her feet.

_How humiliating._

When she had recovered enough to straighten halfway, she refocused on her objective. The orbs that she could somehow control, perhaps it was possible to summon them to herself. She sat on the edge of the chair gingerly, stretched out her right hand and closed her eyes to better direct her focus to thinking about the orbs. She could draw them to her by curling her first two fingers inwards to her palm in quick, precise motions, all she needed to do was focus on thinking about what she wanted them to do. It was difficult to keep her focus on an image of them punching through the thin metal sheet separating her from the outdoors. As she waited— nearly five minutes for something happen, every small noise, even the sound of her own breath threatened to pull her focus away, not to mention the far more pressing matters on her mind.

 _Just a few more moments._ She kept telling herself, the probability of the plan working seemed to decrease with every passing second. With every tedious, painful breath she took in, the voice in her head, telling her how foolish she was, grew louder and louder.

Finally, she thought she could make out the faint whirring sound just before with loud _bang_ , the orbs punched through the metal. Sinara’s eyes snapped open at the noise, it was shocking and gratifying, she thought, that she’d been able to summon them from such a distance.

 _I win._ She thought triumphantly at the fearful part of her mind. Then; _I can’t believe I’m competing with myself, how much of an idiot am I?_

She made her way unsteadily to the new ‘windows’ she’d made in her wall, feeling slightly refreshed by the success of the first stage of her mission. She was steadier on her feet, and the pain in her head had subsided slightly from the adrenaline. 

The holes in the wall were tiny, set about half a meter from the floor, but peering through them; she could see she was on the second story of whatever building they were holding her in. Her room looked out over an alleyway that leads to an area where many visitors of the planet had landed their spacecraft.

She examined the holes and decided that if she could use her orbs to create a strip of open space; it would be possible to peel the metal away wide enough to slide through. The drop to the ground was significant, but the ground was soft from the layers of snow, she would simply need to angle herself carefully.

But first, as a precaution, she lodged the old chair under the doorknob in case her captors decided that the loud noises that would result from her efforts were a cause for concern. Then, she sat on the bed, facing the two holes she made in the wall and holding the orbs in her outstretched hand. They rose, circling each other in the air as she cupped her hand, flying lose towards the wall as she straightened her hand. They flew back through, punching the fifth and sixth holes in the wall as she retracted her first and second finger towards her palm. At which point she paused, hearing voices downstairs and footsteps pounding on the staircase. She considered the slice she’d taken out of the wall, it was barely wider than her shoulders, but it would have to do.

Sinara slid off the bed and knelt in front of the hole; her heart was beating so quickly that she the metal was sharp, and inconsistently torn. She tucked her hands inside her shirt and gripped the outermost pieces of the wall, yanking them to the floor. The metal screeched as it was pulled back and Sinara could hear her captors outside the door, asking each other what on earth that noise was. She tore another strip of the metal aside, hoping the door would hold them for a few moments longer, the sharp edge of the last piece she had to tear away sliced through the material of her shirt and dug into her skin.

Sinara jerked her hand back involuntarily but forced herself to finish the job with her uninjured hand. She sat back on her heels for a moment, inspecting the cut along the top of her palm, just under her fingers, it was deep enough that she could make out the underside of her knuckles and her hand was slick with blood. It didn’t hurt, thanks to the adrenaline coursing through her system, she felt too exhilarated for pain, but she was shaking badly. She swung her legs through the hole in the wall, holding herself up on her hands to avoid gouging her legs on the metal scraps. She pushed herself through, pulling her hands tightly against her sides to avoid catching them on the metal.

She was falling through the air for the briefest moment before her feet slammed into the ground and she pitched forward into the snow. She pushed herself back to her feet, holding her injured hand against her stomach to stop it from bleeding all over the ground. Somewhere above her, she could hear Raha and Hast shouting in surprise and arguing with each other— she didn’t have enough time. She glanced down the alley, she’d have to run past Raha and Hast, and any allies they might have in the teeming crowd in the center of the outpost to get to her ship. She ran the other direction, towards the ships closer to her. None of them were hers, but if she could find one of Kree origin, she would be able to get it in the sky at least.

Sinara set off, pressing her back to the side of the wall, hoping to stay out of view of Raha and Hast for as long as possible.

She made it barely twenty feet before three gunshots rang out in the alley. She didn’t bother to look towards the source. Instead, she all out fled; tearing away from the wall and bolting across the alleyway. More gunshots rang out, followed by yells, but they were background noise to the blood rushing through her ears. She took a sharp corner, slipping on the icy ground and stumbling back to her feet as she entered the storage area for the ships.

Sinara darted along the line of ships, examining the symbols marking their vertical stabilizers searching for ones she recognized. The fifth ship did, it was a Kree vessel— not army issue but a private vessel. Sinara hoped the controls would not deviate from standard military vessels because the voices were drawing closer and she knew she would not have enough time to find an alternative.

She dashed to the entry hatch and wrenched it open, it was locked but easy enough to break. She climbed inside and jammed the door shut with the broken handle she’d ripped from the outside. The cockpit was fancy enough that she felt slightly guilty for bleeding all over it as she made her way to the pilot’s chair, leaving smears of blue along the white walls and furniture. The engine roared to life as she pressed the ignition button, and the ship began rising off the ground before her hands even reached the controls.

She jerked back in surprise, watching out the window as she rose past the ships around her, stopping only when she was level with the top of the nearest building. Raha and Hast were hurrying towards another ship on the ground, one with far more weapon systems. She lurched for the controls, accelerating the ship higher into the sky. Sinara glanced down watching as the cursed snowy planet fell away, growing smaller and smaller as her ship rushed towards the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> ~ Cartwen


	6. Give and Take

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sinara makes for Hala while Kasius heads up an investigation on Contraxia.

**Sinara:**

Her leg was bleeding profusely. She glanced down to inspect the injury; a bullet was lodged in the back of her right leg, embedded deep enough in the muscle that she could not easily remove it. She didn’t remember getting shot and the adrenaline still coursing through her prevented her from feeling the pain.

She turned her attention to the navigation system and located Hala in the system. It was a much longer journey than the one she had made to get to Contraxia. She would need to make five-hundred and four jumps to reach her destination, and it was unsafe to make more than fifty jumps at once. She set the course, allowing the ship to travel on autopilot towards the jump point located fifty clicks off the planet. She left the pilot’s seat and made her way to the back of the ship to find something to patch herself up.

The only other area on the ship was a sitting room, two sets of four seats facing each other around a table. Against the back wall, there was a rest room and a kitchen area, where she found fine white cloth napkins. There was no med-kit to be found, even in the backroom, whoever traveled on this ship clearly hadn’t been anticipating any trouble. She tied a few of the napkins around her injured leg to stem the blood flow and wrapped a third napkin around her bloodied hand. The blood had long since clotted on her injuries from the previous day and didn’t need to be bandaged— had that been only a day ago? How much time had she lost? Clearly not an obscene amount of time, given the state of her injuries, yet potentially a substantial amount.

She sank into one of the seats, leaning her forehead against the cold leather upholstery, allowing her eyes to fall closed for a brief moment. She hadn’t considered how completely exhausted she was until that moment. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything or had water— had it truly been back at the Lighthouse? And the blood loss and vomiting hadn’t done her any favors. Once she was through the jump point on her way to Hala she would search the kitchen area, hopefully, she would be able to keep it down.

She rose and began making her way back to the cockpit, clutching onto the chairs for support, limping on her injured leg, which unfortunately was beginning to hurt.

_Crack!_

The floor tilted under Sinara’s feet, sending her sliding across the cabin until she slammed until the opposite wall, crumpling to the floor. The force of the hit knocked the wind from her lungs, and her vision went dark for a brief moment while she tried to remember how to breathe.

_If I get a concussion on top of everything else, I swear…_

There was another loud explosion, knocking the ship off balance again, tossing her into the wall again, this time with significantly less impact because of her position on the floor.

The realization dawned on her slowly, and then with sudden urgency: _Oh! I’m under attack!_

She forced her eyes open and pushed herself up on her forearms; the cockpit was lit by flashing red lights that did little to help the pulsing ache in her freshly re-injured head, a shrieking alarm was going off.

 _“Five kilometers to jump point. Please select your course.”_ The computer announced, momentarily drowning out the alarm.

Sinara stayed close to the floor, moving on her hands and knees back towards the cockpit; it was a more secure position if the ship was hit again, but she was entirely unconvinced that she’d be able to stand if she tried.

She pulled herself into the pilot's seat, holding herself steady with the armrests against a spell of dizziness as she strapped herself to the seat. She pressed the button on the armrest to dictate her orders to the computer.

“Fifty jumps on a course to Hala.”

 _“Fifty jumps. Destination: Hala.”_ The computer responded. _“Three kilometers to jump point.”_

“Damage report,” Sinara asked the computer, checking the ships video logs in an attempt to see who had shot at her, or if they were still in pursuit.

_“Weapons systems compromised.”_

She was being pursued by an unmarked ship, positioned too far back for her to see who was piloting it.

_“One kilometer to jump point.”_

The weapons system screen began displaying an alert from which Sinara surmised the ship pursuing them had locked onto them.

_“Half-a-kilometer to jump point. Confirm course.”_

“Hala!” Sinara told the computer, impatience edging into her voice, she couldn’t afford to lose focus on the ship pursuing her.

_“Entering jump point.”_

Something slammed into the back of the ship, Sinara lurched forward, bracing her hands against the dashboard, thankfully held back by the seat belt. Her head snapped back against the headrest, and her wrist joints were jammed against the dashboard.

 _“Critical systems damaged. Course to Hala incomplete.”_ The computer informed her. _“Critical flight systems damaged.”_

Sinara swore, slamming her uninjured hand against the dashboard in frustration. “Could I get one break?” she demanded of no one or nothing in particular.

 _“Flight systems damaged. Terminate flight now.”_ The computer continued. _“Engine failure imminent.”_

“Set course for nearest planet,” Sinara told the computer. “Where can I land?”

_“Fifteen kilometers to Xandar. Setting autopilot.”_

Sinara turned her attention back to the weapons system; it was no longer detecting the ship that had pursued her off Contraxia. There were other ships in the vicinity, but none of them had her ship on their weapons radar.

 _“Landing gear compromised.”_ The computer told her.

Sinara turned her attention away from the weapons system to the planet in front of her, from this high up, it appeared to be mostly water. But as the ship got closer, she was able to make out land and a city below her along the edge of the water. It was nothing like Contraxia, there were large green areas, and the city was filled with tall, intricately designed buildings.

“Can I land in the water?” She asked the computer.

_“While it will lessen collision impact, landing in water will severely damage ship systems.”_

“Can I land on the ground?”

_“Survival chances at less than five percent for a ground collision.”_

“Turn off autopilot.”

_“Autopilot deactivated. Five kilometers to surface.”_

Sinara steered the ship towards the water, a point far enough out that the water would be deep but so far that rescue would be impossible.

“Send an emergency message to on-planet authorities,” Sinara told the computer, unsure if it was even possible, but she certainly didn’t need to make more enemies by crash landing on a foreign planet.

_“S.O.S. Message sent to Xandarian military. Engine failing.”_

Something on the ship shuddered to a stop, and the entire structure began to shake and rattle at the air rushing around it. Sinara pressed a button on the dashboard that extended the landing gear, wings extended on either side of the ship which helped with the shaking but overall did very little to slow the descent.

_“Half-a-kilometer to surface. Prepare for landing.”_

Sinara reached down and tightened the belt holding her in her seat, tight enough that it was difficult to breathe. It was getting harder to steer the plane against the rushing air, and she was struggling with the controls.

The water seemed to be rushing up towards her, fortunately, more slowly as the wings softened the descent until, with a loud bang, the ship broke through the surface of the water, plunging several meters below the surface. If it weren’t for the tight seatbelt, Sinara would have been thrown from her seat. Instead, she was jostled around violently— which was still painful given the extent of previous injuries.

But she was conscious and clear-headed enough to note the wide, blank expanse of blue outside the ship in front of her and see how the windshield began to crack from the change in pressure as the ship began to drift back towards the surface. Perhaps she should have felt terrified, but she didn’t so, perhaps then, she’d hit her head too many times to be able to think straight. But, instead, she just felt relieved, as though something terrible had just ended, even though she knew it would likely get much, much, worse.

When the cockpit window broke through the surface of the water, it was surrounded by Xandarian military airships.

_Here’s the much worse._

**Kasius:**

Within five minutes of disembarking from the ship, Kasius knew he hated Contraxia. It was crowded; though surrounded by his guards, he paid little attention to the crowds. It was windy and wet and unpleasant, and the colors of the lights were astonishingly offensive. His heavy cloak did little to prevent or lessen the bone-chilling cold.

They swept across the outpost, the masses of people in the square fell silent at the sight of the Kree military division. Kasius noticed several brave souls breaking free of the crowds and making for their ships, hoping to abandon the planet before trouble came for them. But Kasius’s men would be giving no trouble to civilians; they were under express orders that, unless directly threatened; their only purpose there was to deal with these Praxian troublemakers.

Their intelligence sources had them visit a building located down a small alley, behind one of the nightclubs. Kasius had his men surround the building from all sides, including the roof while he waited with Rastak and his guards near the entrance to the nightclub to appear less conspicuous.

Kasius was trying very hard not to feel hopeful about the mission. He knew it was foolish, that he was tempted to buy into the claims because of he wanted, desperately, for them to be true. It was completely impossible for such a thing to have happened. But where else could such a strange threat come from? Perhaps the Terrans who had escaped the Lighthouse, but Kasius doubted any of them could be counted on for such a complex plan. Or perhaps he wanted to believe that.

Kasius thought that he should like to trust his own mind again, it had been such a long time since he’d felt sure of anything.

Rastak tapped his shoulder. “We’re cleared for entry, sir.”

Kasius nodded and started after his guards who were on the move before he even gave his word.

They entered the alley, passing through the line of soldiers surrounding the house as they approached the door on the ground floor. Rastak rapped on the door, hesitating only a moment before opening it himself; throwing himself against the door so forcefully that the top door hinge broke off the wall. One of the guards held the door open as Kasius and Rastak stepped through.

They entered into a narrow, dark hallway that led them to a kitchen area, rusting and dirty as though it hadn’t been cleaned in years. Behind the kitchen, there were a set of stairs, seemingly carved out of frozen dirt, leading them into a cellar. Kasius let his guards go first, listening to them make their way through the space below them. After a few long moments, surprised talking erupted below them. He could hear his guards demanding that whoever it was stand get up and stand against the wall.

A few more moments passed before one of the guards reappeared at the bottom of the staircase, motioning to the rest of the party that it was safe to enter. Rastak cut in front of him, producing a flash light from his pocket. The light danced off the walls, revealing the thin layer of ice that covered them— the room below the building was even colder than the outdoors, seemingly, they’d stepped into an icebox.

The bottom of the staircase was yet another hallway the eventually let out into some sort of makeshift control room; six computer monitors were set up along three mismatched tables. His guards stood in a semicircle around one of the walls, surrounding whoever occupied the room. Kasius and Rastak cut through the ranks, standing inside the circle.

The culprits were two Praxians who were unfamiliar to him, neither of them looked at all afraid of the ten weapons trained on them, or the Kree military division at their base.

“If you are here about the tip, forget about it, she left.” The first Praxian said.

“We know she was never here. What do you want?” Rastak demanded. “Who do you work for?”

“Money, obviously.” The second Praxian replied, it's tone suggesting that Rastak was quite possibly the densest person they’d ever spoken to. “If you let us go, we might be able to catch your spy.” The Praxian gestured towards the computer system, which, upon inspection seemed to be showing footage from a spaceship.

“What is it?” Rastak demanded, jerking his chin towards the computer.

“A remote control system for a space ship. Let us go, meet our price, we’ll help you catch your traitor.”

“She’s not a traitor!” Kasius snapped, immediately realized he sounded deranged, speaking in the present tense. “She died.” He amended rather lamely.

“She showed up here looking all right.” The second Praxian retorted. “You’re the emperor’s son?”

Kasius nodded sharply, ignoring Rastak’s glance of warning.

“She was rather strange.” The second Praxian continued. “Didn’t talk much, not even when we tortured her. Almost killed Hast here,” The Praxian indicated their partner.”— just for speaking to her. But she wanted to know about you, she wanted to find you, said she _loved you_.”

Kasius’s hand was on his pistol before he consciously processed what he was doing; he shot the second Praxian. They crumpled to the ground, black blood pooling on the ground, sickeningly reminiscent of Odium.

“Sir!” Rastak exclaimed, jerking back in surprise. “What are you thinking?”

Kasius lowered the gun, turning to stare at the first Praxian, Hast. “Perhaps Hast will be a little more forthcoming.”

“I… can’t argue with that.” Rastak managed, sounding more surprised than horrified.

“What do you want? Why did you want us here?” Kasius demanded, forcing his voice to a deceptively soft pitch.

“This is a misunderstanding.” Hast protested, shrinking away slightly. “I can prove it to you, on the computers.”

Kasius nodded his assent to Rastak who in turn directed the soldiers to stand aside, allowing Hast to make his way to the computers. Kasius followed suite, standing well back behind his guard as he waited for Hast to make the computer monitors do something in way of an explanation.

“Sir, this seems like an ill-advised trick.”

“I agree. We shall wait nonetheless, when nothing comes from it, we’ll be rid of him and leave this place.”

Rastak nodded. “Waste of time if you ask me.”

“Best to err on the side of caution when it comes to matters of the Lighthouse.”

“And with our reputation.”

Kasius forced a chuckle, turning his attention back to the computer monitors where Hast had made no progress. “We were promised proof, Hast, how much longer must we endure this ice box?”

Hast sighed, turning in his chair. “The ship disappeared sir, through a jump point, I would need a few more hours at least to track the ship’s course—”

“Or to call for help?” Rastak retorted. “I think we are done here.”

“Look! I swear it was just about money, but I can help you find your spy.”

Kasius jerked his head in Rastak’s direction. Rastak produced his own pistol and aimed it at Hast, finger hovering over the trigger.

“I’m telling the truth. We just thought we could make money turning in a traitor, we didn’t mean—”

Rastak fired the gun. Hast crumpled to the ground.

“Let’s get out of here.”

The guards hurried towards the doorway, leading the way for Rastak and Kasius to follow them back into the relative warmth of the upper floor of the building. They swept back through the hallway, Rastak and the guards were in a hurry to be off the planet. But something in the kitchen caught Kasius’s attention; a doorway he hadn’t previously noticed. He started towards it.

“Is there a problem, your highness?” one of the guards asked, pausing at the entrance to the kitchen.

“Ready the ship, I’ll stay a moment longer here.”

“Sir,” Rastak began to protest.

“Dismissed.”

When Rastak and the rest of the unit had cleared out of the kitchen and were well on their way to the front of the house, Kasius proceeded to the door. It led to a steep staircase to the upper levels of the building. Unsure of what pushed him to do so, he climbed to the first landing. One of the doors led to a bathroom, the other led to a small, barren bedroom, furnished with mismatched pieces.

Kasius stepped into the room and glanced around. Two things drew his attention; the gaping hole in the wall and the splinters of what appeared to be a chair littered the floor. The third thing that caught his attention was the blood; spattered on the floor near the door and virtually soaking the mattress. Large smears of blue covered the already filthy, grey mattress and stains trailed across the wooden floorboards.

It certainly looked as though someone had been tortured there.

He approached the hole in the wall and examined how the metal had been peeled back; in strips, the metal looked as though it had been punched through— perhaps by bullet.

The scene made him uneasy, tempting his illogical mind to buy into what Hast had said. That there was some way that Sinara had made this mess — it would be rather like her, he thought. It was utterly impossible for such things to happen, but he couldn’t help but remember the events of a few days prior. He felt as though he were being stabbed, as though he were being tortured.

Kasius scoffed out loud at the path his mind took; _what? She woke up and travelled to this planet on a ship while recovering from a mortal injury, instead of immediately returning to her home planet? A likely story, Kasius, the Praxians looted the Lighthouse, the Praxians are trying to start trouble_.

Footsteps on the stairs pulled him from his thoughts.

“Your highness? Is everything all right?”

“Naturally, this business with the Praxians bothers me, is all. It’s very strange.”

“Very strange indeed, your highness, perhaps best to let your father handle it.”

Kasius nodded, relieved at the thought of returning to Hala, there, it was easier to lock away the anguish he felt in some deep place that was easy to ignore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> ~Cartwen


	7. The Throne Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sinara and Kasius wait.

**Sinara:**

_Day 1:_

Xandarian jail overall wasn’t that bad. Though, according to the military police who’d arrested her off her spaceship, she wasn’t technically in jail, just in custody until they figured out if it was safe for them to let her go. But, she was in another small, empty room that she wasn't allowed to leave— so she went ahead and called it jail.

On the bright side, the Xandarians had a doctor attending to her injuries. The bullet had been removed, and her wounds were cleaned, stitched up, and bandaged. She had quite the concussion and had been instructed to rest as much as she could— as though she had anything else to do.

Not that she could complain about that either, her bed was narrow but comfortable, and she was so drained that she would never have made it to Hala in her current state.

_Day 5:_

Sinara was beginning to get bored; now that she wasn’t sleeping between eighteen and twenty hours in a day, the lying there was beginning to get tedious. Particularly when she had very little to think about; among the major downsides to having no memories was the inability to think about anything but questions.

Yesterday, the Xandarians had brought in a specialist to study her brain scans, because, like the Praxians they had a hard time believing she didn’t remember anything. Apparently, Kree were the least trustworthy species in the galaxy, and from what little she knew about herself, she could hardly blame everyone else. Regardless, the specialist confirmed that due to either restricted or terminated blood flow to the brain, there had been severe damage to the area of her brain that stored memory. She didn’t care to remember the scientific terminology they’d used to explain it; she was more focused on how on Earth those circumstances had occurred.

The specialist suggested hypoxia or hypovolemic shock.

_Day 18:_

She’d been promised an audience with a commander from the Xandarian army to explain her circumstances and plead her case to be let out. But two weeks had passed without the indication of such a meeting.

Her wounds were healing well; she no longer had to wear the bandages as long as she was careful to keep the areas clean. Her head felt better and clearer than it had since she woke up at the Lighthouse. She was able to get up and walk the perimeter of her holding cell, and every morning and evening, a guard would take her to a larger bathroom where she was permitted to shower. She ate the food delivered to her cell three times a day.

The monotony was maddening.

_Day 27:_

No meeting had occurred yet. Sinara lay curled on her bed, her face buried in the pillow. They’d changed the sheets while she was in the shower this morning; her new pillowcase was soft and smelled fresh. But, not even hyper-fixation on the changes in her environment was soothing; she was as restless, and she was distressed.

The only thing she could think about was getting to Hala, which would lead her to consider the possibilities of what would happen if she ever got there. Worst case scenario, they’d treat her like the Praxians did, second-worst case scenario, she’d be killed on sight. She couldn’t envision a best-case scenario; she got her answers? Well, and then what, just because Kasius told her something didn’t mean she should take his word for it, or that it would be altogether helpful in wherever she went next.

She needed time, to re-learn and rebuild, but she also needed help; someone she could trust to push her in the right direction. She hoped, wished like crazy that she could trust Kasius to be that person.

But that just didn’t seem very likely, and it felt as though that knowledge was killing her.

_Day 40:_

“Sinara? Is it? I hear you’ve been asking for a meeting with me for some time.” The Xandarian commander spoke the language she could understand, presumably Kree, with a stiff, unsure accent. But, her broken speech did little to make her less intimidating. The commander sat on a chair, a bit away from her bed, flanked by four guards. She was dressed up in a formal military uniform and carried an array of weapons on her belt.

“For over a month,” Sinara responded, her tone unforgiving. “Can I leave?”

The commander ignored her. “My doctors tell me you don’t remember much of your life.”

Sinara simply nodded in response, hoping she’d get to the point rather quickly.

“How about we start with you telling me everything you do remember?”

“I’ve already told the doctors.” Sinara reminded her, but the foreboding look she gave her was enough proof to tell her what she knew. She told her about waking up at the Lighthouse, and her journey to Contraxia, the Praxians, and her botched escape.

The commander listened patiently with a contemplative look on her face, but as soon as Sinara finished, she had a few questions. “You remember nothing, but you know who to find on Hala?”

“Kasius. His name was in a computer file that was the only concrete proof of others living on the Lighthouse when I did.” Sinara lied, considering it best not to try and explain the inexplicable knowledge burned into her mind. “Visitors to Contraxia told me that the heir to the Kree throne bears the name and served at the Lighthouse.”

The commander took this knowledge in stride after scrutinizing Sinara so carefully that she was beginning to worry that her lying had a tell.

“Very well.”

“I can leave?” Sinara asked, a hint of hope creeping into her voice.

The commander chuckled, not mockingly but also not reassuringly. “I’ll further review your case.”

_Day 56:_

_Finally._ She was leaving, finally. Some Xandarian general was traveling to Hala for a business negotiation with one of Emperor Taryan’s advisors; his ship would take her right to the Imperial Palace. Sinara felt so giddy at the promise of leaving the cell; she was nearly smiling as she got ready for the journey.

They gave her a new outfit to travel in; black pants, a shirt and a jacket like the ones worn by Xandarian foot soldiers. She did her hair in a simple braid down her back, feeling as though she ought to put in some effort to look nice in front of the emperor. She wasn’t allowed to have weapons, but they returned the silvery spheres they’d recovered from the shuttle crash.

 _Little do they know._ Sinara thought in amusement as she pocketed them, glad to have some form of defense in case things went badly. She brushed the flicker of concern to the side, unwilling to let anything dampen her spirits just yet.

_At last, Hala, Kasius, and some damn answers._

**Kasius:**

_Day 1:_

He hadn’t had the chance to rest since before his engagement party, upon his return from Contraxia, he was immediately thrown into a series of meetings with the security council; all of them working to decipher the puzzle of the Praxians actions.

There were no indications across all their fronts of a Praxian attack. But no one could decide why they had been watching the Lighthouse in the first place or what they could have wanted from him badly enough to have him come to Contraxia.

Kasius gave his story to the security council in three different statements and answered hours of questions as their assistants recorded every possible hint.

He wanted to stop reliving it.

_Day 5:_

“If I am asked my opinion on one more type of wine, I may break the bottle over that man’s head.” Majia groaned, sprawling over his couch.

He wished she would leave; he was utterly exhausted.

They had been in between the security council and wedding planning meetings for three days, pausing only for a few hours’ sleep. The advisors and servants managed to give an equally urgent tone to intelligence briefings and choosing the fabric of his wedding robes.

The phantom pains were bothering him more and more since his visit to the house on Contraxia. He was almost glad to have had Majia with him constantly for the past few days, her hand always found its way to his arm during an attack, grounding him in reality. She could talk them out of any of his father’s insulting questions about Kasius’s behavior without giving a full explanation.

She wasn’t Sinara, but she was an excellent ally.

_Day 18:_

If he had to sign one more invitation message, he thought his hand would fall off. He and Majia had been passing a tablet back and forth, signing off on three thousand invitations to be sent to influential people all over the galaxy that Taryan had deemed worthy of coming to the ceremony. It was far from the most exhausting day of preparations thus far, but it was the most mind-numbing. Shockingly, not even Majia felt like talking, so the silence droned on for the long hours they spent sitting there.

He was better than he had been, he was doing what he was supposed to, and disagreements with his father were at an all-time low. Handling the Praxian threat had done wonders for his reputation, marching out to Contraxia to face them himself, killing them in cold blood, everyone said he was just like his brother.

_Just like my brother, just like Faulnak._

The thought was so horrifying, and yet he couldn’t help but feel complimented by it, for so many years of his life he’d striven to meet the expectation. If Sinara were here, she’d glare at him; she didn’t like the thought of him being a warrior.

_Sinara would hate who you’ve become, a pushover in your impending marriage, someone who rushes into dangerous situations, someone who can’t even form cohesive ideas._

_Day 40:_

The picture of him and Sinara was fading.

It had been three months since the Lighthouse since he’d stood over Sinara’s dead body in the med-bay, listening to Hek-Sel read his father’s message demanding that he return home. Three months, and one day since he’d allowed her to go on that fool’s errand after the time travelers.

Kasius couldn’t make himself get out of bed. He’d been so busy for the past two weeks that he hadn’t been left spare time to grieve; a fact that made him so guilty it was nearly as crippling as the bereavement. Three months seemed entirely too short a time to be used to being without someone, Sinara deserved more of him.

_Am I forgetting her?_

**Sinara:**

The general she was traveling with was talkative; he sat across from her as the pilot steered them, unchallenged between jumps points. The journey to Hala was short, only four flight hours; but it felt much longer with the chattering general.

He talked about his own business for some time, not that Sinara paid enough attention to recall what his business was later. Alas, she was paying so little attention that he noticed and began discussing what they would do when they reached Hala, forcing her to acknowledge him.

“We’ll arrive close to the time of my meeting, with one of Taryan’s advisors, after my meeting I should be able to have him broker an introduction between yourself and the emperor’s son.”

Sinara sighed. “I don’t need an introduction; I can find him myself when the ship lands.”

“Girl,” the General began disapprovingly. “The emperor’s son is a very busy man, he is a military strategist in a time of war, and he’s getting married in a month. Introductions are the way things are done.”

Sinara ignored his last point. “Married?”

The General raised his eyebrows, completely confused by her response. “Yes, to an odd girl, exceedingly unpopular among the Kree nobility, but from an exceedingly wealthy family from what I’ve heard. Why are you surprised?”

Sinara shrugged, unable to think of a real reason to give him. “I don’t know.”

The General gave her another long, skeptical glance which she ignored pointedly, driving their conversation to its end. They sat in silence for the remainder of the trip, which Sinara was just fine with; it took a lot of focus to keep her mind studiously blank.

Sinara was disappointed that the Xandarian shuttles had no windows in the passenger cabin, she would’ve liked to see her home planet on the flight in. But, with any luck, there would be time for that later.

They landed in a large industrial hangar filled with transport shuttles where they were greeted by a Kree guard. The guard regarded her with suspicion as she stepped off the shuttle, but said nothing of it until the general spoke;

“This is Sinara, one of yours who’s been in our custody for some time.”

The guard nodded at her but didn’t really look all that more reassured. He gestured to the general, beginning to escort him towards a door on the opposite side of the hangar to their left and the two immediately struck up a lively conversation about the design of the Kree shuttles.

Sinara followed them for a time, a few paces back, looking for a place to make her getaway. She spotted a pile of sheet metal, propped against the wall near the door that the general was being led towards. When the guard and the general drew level with it, she ducked behind it. If they noticed her disappearance at all, she never heard of it.

The tiny corridor formed by the metal sheets and the wall stretched for nearly a hundred feet, letting out behind another shuttle that was under construction. The mechanic lying underneath the shuttle stared at her when she emerged from underneath the metal, in return, she nodded to him.

There was another door, leading out of the hangar twenty feet further, that door deposited her into a maze of hallways connecting servants quarters and maintenance centers. The walls were white stone, and the floors were black slate, reminiscent of the Lighthouse. Additionally, it was just as much of a horrific maze. The hallways appeared to be arranged in a logical grid. Nonetheless, it was one she could not process when she barely knew her rights from her lefts.

“Hey, you there!”

Sinara turned around to see two guards rounding the corner, hurrying towards her.

Suddenly, the idea occurred to her; if they took her into custody— she’d be introduced to the emperor and his son without any hassle. They’d march her right into the throne room right now if she seemed dangerous enough. So, she ran, intentionally circling a small section of the grid until she turned a corner and ran straight into them.

They, of course, grabbed her and searched her for weapons, when they found the silver spheres, they immediately assumed she’d stolen them from their armory.

“Thought you could sneak in here without us noticing, _thief_ ” The first guard growled, pulling her hands behind her back so roughly that it hurt her still sore shoulder. “Well, today’s your lucky day, thief, are you ready to meet the emperor?”

Sinara had never been so glad to be right about something in all her life.

**Kasius:**

Getting up that morning was difficult, he lay in bed for hours before the sound of Majia, arguing with someone, presumably in his dining room provided just enough motivation to get him to stand. He pulled on a robe and hurried into the dining room, where Majia sat at the table, eating and studiously ignoring the lecturing of her chaperone, Ata.

“What is the meaning of this?” He demanded, taking his seat across from Majia. “We agreed on no morning meetings, ever.”

“Dismissed, Ata,” Majia commanded. “And don’t even think about lecturing me about modesty, you’re terrible at your job.”

“Madame—” Ata began.

“She’s right. She’s in here so often unaccompanied; I was beginning to think her parents neglected to hire someone.” Kasius agreed, busying himself with pouring a glass of water.

Ata hurried out of the room, muttering something to herself that Kasius didn’t care to make sense of.

“You look stupid when you’re not wearing your makeup,” Majia remarked, her attention mostly on the piece of toast she was putting fruit jam onto.

“Thank you,” Kasius said pointedly. “Why are you here?”

“We are to spend the whole day with your father in the throne room; they’re conducting the raid on Praxia today. We’re to wait there for updates, and work on the wedding menu.”

“So why are you bothering me now?”

Majia checked her wristwatch, tapping it until the screen displayed the date. “Day two-fifty-four, wasn’t that her birthday? I honestly didn’t think you’d get up.”

The chasm in Kasius’s chest expanded, _how could he have not remembered?_

The thought weighed heavily on his mind throughout the morning; he couldn’t focus on the mission launch on the video screen or the various dishes presented to him and Majia for their consideration.

“Where is your brain, boy?” Taryan demanded after the third time he failed to respond to the cook. “I thought you might at least focus on something so foolish as the cooking.”

“I don’t see why this is my job, tasting these strange foods.” Kasius protested lazily, not having the energy to get into it. “I’m sure it’s more Majia’s speed.”

Majia elbowed him in the ribs, sending him a look that warned him not to throw her to the proverbial wolves.

The doors to the throne room burst open, revealing Rastak and several other, less senior advisors.

“Sir, our convoy was shot down over Praxius.” Rastak blurted out.

“What?” The three of them chorused in horrified unison.

Kasius rose from his seat and began to descend from the dais. “They were sent in on a Praxian ship, how could they have been discovered?”

Rastak shrugged, his gaze skipping over Kasius to look at Taryan. “This is an act of war, your highness.”

Kasius shook his head. “We cannot dive into that yet, Rastak, with a traitor among our ranks it’s far too risky.”

“A leak?” Rastak and Taryan demanded in unison.

“How do you suppose the Praxians knew about our spies? An attack is not the answer, not yet, not with ourselves exposed.”

Majia was nodding in approval, Rastak appeared to be taking it into serious consideration.

“He’s right,” Majia noted. “No need to put ourselves in undue danger when the Imperial family itself is still so easy to overthrow.”

Taryan shook his head. “The galaxy needs to know—”

“The universe is afraid of us!” Kasius exclaimed. “One ship down is no threat to your precious reputation.”

“What of all the ships you’ve lost me in the past? All the men?”

“Listening to him would prevent a repetition of that,” Majia remarked.

“Father, listen, give a bit of time, Rastak will find the mole, and once the hole is patched, per se, we’ll be poised for an atta—”

The throne room doors slammed open again before he could finish his plea; the group congregated on the steps of the dais whirled around in unison.

“What now?” Taryan demanded of the guard standing below them. “What do you need?”

“We caught a thief, sir.” The guard said, producing two small silver orbs from his pocket and holding them out towards Taryan.

Kasius grabbed Majia’s arm for support, dizzy at the sight of the weapons. She returned the gesture, holding his elbow to keep him from lilting to the side.

Taryan sighed. “Bring him in.”

The doormen opened the grand doors across the room allowing a second guard and his prisoner to pass through.

Kasius looked up as the pair reached the foot of the dais and felt his heart stop dead in his chest for a moment.

The woman was dressed simply, her hair was done in a simple style, but he’d know her eyes and stoic expression anywhere— even if it were simply impossible.

_“Sinara?”_


	8. Past Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a reunion, a few interrogations, and a story.

**Kasius:**

The woman, who was not Sinara, turned towards him and stared back at him blankly, there was no recognition or emotion behind her eyes— Sinara had always been rather unexpressive, but after so long he had a hard time imagining that this would be her reaction.

 _It’s a trick; it’s a trick, it’s trick_.

The others were chattering around him, but it was background noise to the roaring sound of confusion in his head.

 _It’s a trick; it’s a trick, it’s trick_.

“You know this woman?” Taryan demanded.

“You do too, sir,” Majia said, sounding confused. “Your son’s former… guard, you sent her to the Lighthouse with him.”

“By all accounts, she was killed by the Destroyer of Worlds,” Rastak said in confusion.

“The Destroyer of what?” Not-Sinara demanded in Sinara’s voice. “Killed?”

“Silence, thief!” The guard holding her back snapped, hitting her over the shoulder with the handle of his pistol.

The noise in Kasius’s head cut off abruptly as the pain exploded in his own shoulder and he stumbled back into Majia. He officially had too many questions to begin to process them.

“Don’t touch her!” he exclaimed, beginning to recover his balance and ignoring the insistent voice in his head: 

_It’s a trick; it’s a trick, it’s trick._

The guard, Majia, and Rastak opened their mouth to raise their questions, but Taryan raised a hand, silencing all of them.

“You.” He indicated Not-Sinara. “What’s this about?”

Not-Sinara continued to stare at Kasius, curiosity creeping into her eyes. “My name is Sinara, I’m not a thief, and I need to speak to your son, sir.”

_It’s a trick; it’s a trick, it’s trick._

“What the hell are you doing?” Majia muttered in his ear, propelling him forward slightly, forcing him to step off of the dais, towards Not-Sinara.

“Release her.” Kasius heard himself tell the guard as he continued towards her. The guard removed Not-Sinara’s restraints; her shoulders relaxed forward for a moment before she squared them, squeezing her hands into fists at her sides. Kasius stopped in front of her.

_It’s a trick, it’s —_

“Kasius.” She began, and the realization hit him, feeling as though someone had thrown freezing water all over him.

_This isn’t real._

No one else could say his name in such a way. Before she could finish whatever she was going to say to him, he pulled her into a tight embrace; one of his arms looping around her waist, the other around her upper back. Somehow she didn’t vanish when he touched her.

_Is this real?_

He could tell the gesture surprised her; she stiffened, slowly lifting her arms to hold onto his shoulders uncertainly. Though, after a long moment, she hung her head forward, resting it between his neck and shoulder, allowing herself to relax into the embrace.

Kasius briefly began to consider how it was possible for her to be still alive, or if he was even conscious, but he was distracted from any ruminations by the overwhelming sense of relief at seeing her again.

Sinara pulled away from him suddenly, enough so that she could look at him, but not out of arms reach. His hands remained, resting on her waist and shoulder, her hands moved to his upper arms; she holding on so tightly, he thought she might be holding herself up.

“Who are you?” Sinara blurted out, direct as ever. The statement was so nonsensical that he was sure he’d misheard it.

“Excuse me?” Kasius said, shaking his head as though it would make his hearing better.

Sinara glanced away from him, over his shoulder; he followed her gaze to where his father, Majia, the guards, and Rastak were watching, dumbfounded.

“Ignore them,” Kasius told her, gently brushing his hand over her jaw, forcing her to look back towards him. “Are you hurt?”

Sinara’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly as though she was surprised by the question. But that couldn’t be right; it was probably one of the most common questions she was asked.

She shook her head.

“Do you need to sit down?”

Sinara shook her head again, still looking so pensive and confused, his concern was mounting.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Sinara nodded slowly, pausing a few more moments before answering. “I came from the Lighthouse, I was,” she paused again as though having a hard time putting her thoughts together. “Alone there when I woke up. I was there for over a month before traveling to Contraxia. On Contraxia, I was captured by some,” she paused again. “I don’t know who they were, but they tortured me for information before I escaped to Xandar, but due to mechanical difficulties I was stuck there for some time. Now I am here.”

Kasius barely heard the part about Xandar over the revelation about Contraxia. _She had been there._ And he’d failed to help her. _What a fool I am_.

But of course, there was the more significant concern of how she’d woken up in the first place.

“How did you recover from—?” Kasius was unable to finish the sentence; the thought still made him nauseous. Instead, he indicated the area where she’d been injured on his own torso.

Sinara furrowed her brow but seemed to understand what he was asking her. She mirrored his gesture, placing her hand on his chest. “I don’t remember being injured, either.”

“Either?”

Sinara bit her lip, hard enough that his ached slightly, he wanted to tell her to stop it, but as they’d never discussed such things before, he thought better of it.

“I cannot remember anything from before I woke up at the Lighthouse.”

Kasius opened his mouth to ask another question; he didn’t know what he had planned on asking. A cold feeling spread over his body, and his throat felt too tight to speak; Majia and Rastak were conferring behind him, their low voices the only thing breaking the dead silence in the room.

“Sorry,” Sinara added quickly when he said nothing.

“You knew to come here.” He finally managed.

“I knew who I had to look for.” Sinara corrected, a strange, unidentifiable emotion creeping into her voice.

 _But she wanted to know about you; she wanted to find you, said she loved you_. The Praxian’s words drifted back to him, strangely comforting.

Sinara took a sharp breath in and squared her shoulders. “Can you help me? I,” she paused and grimaced, a gesture that Kasius found rather amusing, or perhaps relieving; Sinara was always uncomfortable with vulnerability. “I literally don’t know anyone else.” She finished.

“What did you do?” Kasius asked tentatively, his mind racing to a thousand horrid possibilities of what an oblivious Sinara might have done while wandering about the galaxy.

Sinara blinked. “Nothing, well, I stole a ship and abandoned my Xandarian escort. But,”

It wasn’t fantastic, but it was better than the things that had been running through his mind.

“You remember, I do not, but I trust you, and I want to stay here.”

 _As if I was going to ever let her out of my sight again_. He had been half-ready to jump on a spaceship that instant if she hadn’t wanted to stay.

“Of course.” He told her. “Whatever you need.”

Sinara nodded, allowing her shoulders relax, for a moment he thought she was going to walk away, but she continued speaking.

“Who, what did I do here? How do we know each other?”

It was a basic question, but nonetheless probably the most complicated question she could have asked. It was a rather long story, and though perhaps the right thing to do was be honest, after all, she wasn’t a child. Contrarily, it wouldn’t be the right thing to pressure her if she couldn’t remember for herself.

“You saved my life. You were my guard.” He said quickly, well aware that he’d hesitated longer than acceptable. “That’s why we were at the Lighthouse together.”

Sinara’s hands slid off his arms, and she stepped back rather suddenly, nodding at his statement, reacting to the clear barrier that his response had created. Kasius instantly felt another overwhelming wave of guilt.

“We were there for twelve years.” Kasius continued, in an attempt to deconstruct the line his last thought had created, but Sinara didn’t seem to catch on. She watched him, waiting for him to finish, she must have had more questions.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Taryan demanded, finally interrupting the exchange. Kasius was unsurprised that he’d finally tired of the chatter, but nonetheless wished he could’ve kept it to himself for longer. “How is this woman here?”

“She traveled here from the Lighthouse, via Contraxia and Xandar, so I suppose that answers one question about our operation on Contraxia.”

“But, this is a woman who was, by quite literally every account, declared dead? And she claims to remember nothing?” Rastak asked skeptically.

“Your Highnesses, I have no desire to not believe her story, but its strange nature cannot be ignored.”

Kasius felt a little foolish, how quickly had he’d forgotten about the events of the Lighthouse, how quickly he’d forgotten that it the impossibility of it. He looked at Sinara, hoping she would finally come out with an explanation. She offered no response and refused to meet his eyes for more than a brief moment.

“I recommend she be taken to a secured location until we can examine her further. Full physical examination, DNA testing, neurological examination, and examination by a psychological specialist.”

“I want it done immediately.” Kasius agreed. “If nothing suspicious is found by the end of the day, I want her to be allowed to return to her quarters.”

Rastak and Taryan exchanged a glance before both giving an assenting nod; Rastak motioned to the guards who started towards Sinara.

Kasius stepped between the guards and Sinara.

“She can walk herself.” He told them. “Sinara’s not our prisoner; she requires our help.”

**Sinara**

Sinara could not say that she was enjoying her time in the interrogation room, which is where they’d put her for her very interrogatory, ‘not-interrogation.’ She had a needle in one arm running a DNA test and small, wireless electrodes covering her neck and forehead that they told her would be used for some sort of brain scan. She had been sitting there for six hours, through a series of three doctors asking her what seemed to be hundreds of questions. And then Taryan’s advisor, who introduced himself as Rastak, drilling her for information on every detail of her life since the Lighthouse.

He showed her a series of images of her own corpse in the small room where she’d woken up— well, that was something she could never forget after having seen it. At least it explained the loser of blood flow to her brain. Rastak left her there with the images rolling around in her mind, fueling her fear over her new set of circumstances. She wasn’t supposed to be alive, and something strange and clearly unheard of had been used to keep her alive, something that left no trace of injury or healing in her system.

 _This is your best case scenario._ She had to keep reminding herself. _They’re not going to kill you. Kasius sees some value in keeping you alive; he might even care about you enough to make sure you’re comfortable. You can go back to being a guard._

The door to the interrogation room opened again, interrupting her thoughts, this time it was the woman from the throne room who entered, promptly shutting the door behind her.

Sinara waited for her to speak, offering no greeting.

“Good to meet you, I didn’t think I’d get the chance.” The woman said, circling the table until she stood on Sinara’s left side. “My name is Majia; I’m Kasius’s intended.”

Presumably, Majia knew who she was and introducing herself would be superfluous; Sinara said nothing as Majia began to remove the electrodes from Sinara’s head.

“They’re letting you go back to your room; it appears you’re who you say you are,” Majia informed her. “However impossible that might be.”

“Where?” Sinara asked, unwilling to continue conversing with the woman.

“I’ll show you,” Majia told her as she pulled the needle out of Sinara’s arm, not bothering to put a bandage over the small cut. Sinara vaguely wondered if this woman was qualified to handle medical equipment, though she wasn’t bothered enough by it to ask.

“You can walk?” Majia asked, supporting Sinara’s arm as she stood up.

Sinara pulled her arm away, being treated like a patient was getting tiresome there was clearly nothing wrong with her. However she had recovered from death, it was over now.

“Of course.”

 

She followed Majia out of the room, into the observation room, and then the hall.

“Where are the others?” Sinara wanted to know.

Majia shrugged. “Likely doing something important, they have an empire to run after all.”

“Not you though?” Sinara responded, letting disdain slip into her voice.

“Not until after my wedding,” Majia replied, unbothered and clearly hoping to bother Sinara. “Though I suppose you were allowed a great role in things without being in the family, perhaps you can put a word in for me.”

Sinara said nothing; she was at a unique disadvantage of knowing neither her opponent nor herself.

“I’m sure Kasius would be here if he could, I think he missed you.” Majia’s tone was nearly sarcastic. “It was constant, _you, this, you, that_ — he’s genuinely a lunatic, with the things I’ve heard about him; I wasn’t planning on keeping him alive after the wedding night.”

A chill shot through Sinara. “You will not make it that far.”

“No, we came to an agreement.” Majia agreed.

Majia turned down a slightly smaller corridor; as far as Sinara could tell, every hallway in the lower levels of the palace was virtually indistinguishable from each other made of the smooth, white stone. Halfway down the small corridor, Majia ushered her into an elevator and punched the button to take them to the sixth floor. The elevator shot upwards at an incredible speed; when it came to rest at the sixth floor, a faint pressure in the back of Sinara’s head made her feel slightly dizzy.

They exited the elevator, stepping into a hall where the wall opposite them was made of glass offering a view of the city. The sun had long since gone down, and the view outside the window was a map of different, brilliantly colored lights shining out of the buildings that stretched to the edge of the water. The water moved and reflected the lights so radiantly, Sinara had to focus quite intently on not appearing amazed by the view. The last thing she needed was to look like a child, stricken by ordinary things.

Majia continued down the hallway to the door past the elevator; two guards were stationed near the door, but they stepped back as Majia approached. Majia ignored the guards as she passed through the door, Sinara followed her lead, squashing down a flicker of curiosity about the guards. _Was that what she did?_ She stared straight ahead, not making eye contact with them.

The door led into a grand sitting room; it reminded her of the great room at the Lighthouse with the wood furnishing and abundance of potted plants. Behind the grand room, there was a hallway with several doors leading off of it; Majia indicated one of them to her, informing her that it was the bath-room before continuing to the door at the end of the hallway.

“Here you are,” Majia said, holding the door open until Sinara entered. “If you need anything, take it up with Kasius.”

And she was gone.

Sinara shut the door and bolted it behind her. The room was quite small but still nice and lit with dim, golden light. It had three white stone walls and one glass wall that overlooked a courtyard garden. The courtyard below was dimly lit by torches, but not well enough for her to make out details this high up.

Her bed took up most of the space in the room; the only other furnishings were the bedside table and a wardrobe across from the bed. The wall above the bed was draped with gold and white silk, similar to the room at the Lighthouse.

Sinara sat at the foot of the bed, exhaustion finally catching up to her now that there was little else to do. She found a sleepwear set in the wardrobe to change into and climbed into bed. Just as she was getting ready to turn off the light, there was a knock at the door.

Sinara suppressed a groan and made her way to the door and unlatched it. She opened the door just a crack, revealing Kasius waiting outside the door; standing abnormally close to the doorframe as though he’d stopped short of walking into it.

“Good evening.” He began, his voice sounded too formal and too awkward. “So Majia got you back to your room safely then?”

“Clearly,” Sinara replied, opening the door slightly more. “Do you need something?”

Kasius frowned slightly; she could feel him pushing on the other side of the door, trying to get her to open it further. “I wanted to see you.”

Tired as she was, Sinara let the door fall open and backed up into the room until her knees hit the bed and she sat down. She slid herself back until she was propped against the pillows near the headboard.

Kasius followed her into the room, moving around the bed to sit beside her on the far side.

“You must be wearied; I apologize for today’s events, my father can be a trying man to deal with.”

“I just need a few hours to rest. What do you need me to do in the morning?” Sinara asked.

Kasius turned towards her, seeming shocked at the question. “Excuse me?”

“I work for you, don't I?” Sinara prompted. “I don’t mean to be a burden, but I don’t remember what to d—”

“Sinara, don’t be foolish. You must focus on readjusting; you’ll not work another day as my guard if you don’t wish to.”

“Oh. I—” Sinara began.

“I, myself am unwilling to put you in harm’s way after recent events,” Kasius said softly, resting his hand on her shoulder gently. After a long moment, when she didn’t move away, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. “I don’t believe I can learn to be without you.”

Sinara let her head sag against his chest, a warm sense of relaxation spreading through her body as she allowed herself to roll halfway onto her right side, closer to him. The tension in her chest, the breath she’d been holding for months, the pressure of unanswered questions felt as though it were finally giving way, deflating after so much time. She tensed her shoulders instinctively to bite back a gasp, maybe it was a sob, judging by the heat springing up in her eyes.

“Sinara?” Kasius’s hand traced up her back and back down across her braid; he seemed to sense something was wrong.

Not trusting her voice, she made a vaguely curious humming noise in response.

Kasius hesitated for a long moment before he began speaking.

“The first time I met you, we were on the planet Praxius. My father had an outpost there, the outpost was weak, failing, really. At first, I was honored to have been entrusted with such an important duty, but after three months of making no progress with the Praxians, losing dozens of my men every day, I was beginning to realize that nothing I did would help. You were in my father’s army before you became my guard, stationed on Praxius. I knew who you were,”

Kasius laughed slightly before continuing in an embarrassed tone.

“I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen— but you were terrifying. So, one night you marched yourself right into my quarters and said ’if you cannot do something about this, everyone at this outpost will die.’”

Sinara exhaled sharply in amusement, ignoring how strange it felt to hear about her life in such a way. She wasn’t going to tell Kasius to stop, and she liked hearing him talk and feeling the vibrations of his voice in his chest. _It was a nice story,_ she decided.

“And you, of course, were correct, I was distracted by my endeavors to evacuate, and the Praxians took advantage and struck back at us, decimating our troops. My advisors were unwilling to let me evacuate the surviving troops, they dosed them with Odium and sent them to fight off our enemies before turning on me.”

“Odium?” Sinara interrupted, instantly feeling sorry for doing so, and more so for not understanding.

“A drug, that grants the drinker strength and resilience. All soldiers are supposed to take it and fight until the last moment of a losing battle.”

“A wasteful concept,” Sinara noted, stifling a yawn.

“Thank you,” Kasius replied, relieved. “You appeared, as if out of thin air and killed the generals, preventing them from killing me. We got to a ship and returned to Hala, told everyone that the Praxians had killed everyone else but that we had escaped. My father was not pleased to see that I had returned home, the whole was a ruse, my post was a death sentence, a strategic play on his part. We were exiled to the Lighthouse for our desertion. Your sentence was shorter because you acted under my orders, but you stayed on at the Lighthouse with me, until— are you falling asleep on me?”

Sinara was still listening as well as she could, but she could barely keep her eyes open for the weight of her eyelids. She began to move away from him, the lethargy making her arms too heavy and movement rather difficult. “Sorry.”

Kasius’s arm tightened around her shoulders, stopping her from moving further away. “Don’t be. You are always welcome to… fall asleep on me.” His voice trailed off as he realized halfway through his statement how strange it sounded.

Sinara threw him a questioning glance, realizing as she did how flushed he’d gotten. _He’s embarrassed himself_. She realized, quite amused by the revelation.

“What was a rather strange thing to say, my apologies.” Kasius continued his voice even and controlled after the short pause. “Now, back to the story..." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry! This chapter literally took like 18 years to write! Thank you for reading!  
> Also, I'm a student and finals season is coming up, so if it takes a bit longer for my chapters to come out, that's why! 
> 
> ~Cartwen


	9. How Things Came To Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sinara gets to know Majia, and Kasius gives Sinara a history lesson.

**Sinara:**

When Sinara woke, light was streaming through her window, and she felt well-rested for once. She rolled onto her side to glance at the clock on the bedside table; it wasn’t ridiculously late in the morning, only eight hundred hours but she felt as though she’d slept in.

Kasius was still fast asleep, facing away from her on the other side of the bed. She should let him sleep for now; nobility probably didn’t get out of bed for at least another two hours. She left the room as quietly as possible and made her way down the hallway. The first door in the hallway led to a study; it was the smallest room she’d seen thus far; the neat rows of books covering two of the walls made it feel even smaller. The window in the room overlooked a different courtyard than her room; this one was large and empty except for a modest fountain in the center.

The next room was on the opposite side of the hallway, another bedroom, and the sheer size of it stopped her in her tracks. The ceiling was arched, high overhead, two, maybe three stories higher than the hallway. The only piece of furniture in the whole room— the only thing interrupting the expanse of glossy, black, stone floor was a bed against a window that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Sinara vaguely wondered how a sheet of glass that big could possibly be stable. The window overlooked the city; tall buildings made of dark glass that came to sharp peaks and reflected the morning sun. White stone buildings sprawled lower to the ground, trailing down the hill to the water’s edge. Metallic domes and watchtowers sprinkled throughout the city. Far off, beyond the city and the bay, she could make out mountain peaks, the blue-tinted cliffs making them nearly indistinguishable from the blue sky. Sinara moved closer; she wanted to look at it for a long time, something in her mind was itching to remember something just out of reach. The sight felt familiar, but the details were too hazy and too near to her mind’s end to make sense of.

“You should see the northern cities.”

Sinara turned around in surprise, bumping her leg painfully against the bed frame.

Majia was standing in the doorway. “Where’s Kasius? Did you decide to switch rooms?” Majia asked.

“He’s asleep, and, no,” Sinara replied, pushing past Majia and moving back into the hallway. “What do you want?”

“I usually eat with him before our meetings,” Majia replied, following her as she began to move towards the entry room. “I hope it’s not a bother. Oh, the dining room’s in here.” Majia opened another door leading them into a spacious combined dining and sitting room. “He likes to sleep late; he’s so lazy.” Majia’s voice sounded lazy, as though she had criticisms but barely cared enough to express them as if to emphasize this; she slumped in a chair at the table.

Sinara nodded, barely listening to Majia as she glanced around the room, of all the rooms in this apartment, it was the most densely populated with potted plants.

“He likes plants,” Sinara stated, it might have been a question, or a statement, maybe she hadn’t even meant to say it out loud, she wasn’t sure.

“I’m glad I don’t have to live with them,” Majia commented. “It seems strange to bring nature into a home; perhaps it’s a southern tradition.”

“You’re not from here?”

“From Qol, actually. I was supposed to marry Faulnak, which is why I ever agreed to this nonsense, he would have made a great emperor.”

“Faulnak?” Sinara wanted to know.

“Kasius’s brother. He died at the hands of the Destroyer of Worlds, just like you.”

A sharp pain flickered up behind Sinara’s eyes she rubbed the bridge of her nose as though to push it away but it was gone just as quickly as it started.

“Perhaps he can be cured too,” Sinara remarked.

Majia scoffed. “One can hope, I have no desire to see Kasius run the empire, or marry him.”

Sinara nodded, not quite clear on what a wedding entailed, or what empresses were supposed to do, or why Majia seemed sorry to have any part in it. 

“Kasius was not exaggerating when he said you didn’t talk much,” Majia observed, observing her carefully.

“Kasius didn’t mention you at all,” Sinara replied, taking a few steps further from where Majia was sitting.

“I should think not; it would be quite rude to mention a future spouse while in bed with your lover.”

Sinara glared at her, not deigning to respond to the accusation.

“Really, it doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you, this is just politics. Maybe you can give—”

The door all but slammed open, and Kasius strode into the room looking quite alarmed, tearing her attention away from Majia’s strange words. Kasius’s eyes blown were blown wide, and he was slightly breathless, fear clenched in her own chest. His eyes darted across the room until they met hers and his shoulders relaxed noticeably.

“Is there an emergency we should know about?” Majia asked distractedly, paying more attention to her place setting than her fiancé.

“It’s nothing,” Kasius told her, coming into the room fully and crossing to Sinara. “Good morning.”

Sinara acknowledged the greeting with a nod before leaning close to him and saying in a low voice; “What’s wrong?”

“I’m just being a bit foolish; it’s nothing.”

Sinara inched her eyebrows marginally higher, tilting her head. “Nothing?”

Kasius smiled widely at the gesture, despite the sadness to his next words. “I was beginning to worry that yesterday was a figment of my imagination.”

Sinara didn’t respond, she merely put a hand on his upper arm and smiled at him slightly.

“I know. Just give me some time.” Kasius pressed a light kiss to her forehead before drawing away and turning back to Majia.

“Why are you here?”

Majia and Kasius continued to bicker for a few minutes, but it was background noise to the buzzing in Sinara’s head.

The sharp pain behind her eyes had returned for a brief moment, but was quickly overtaken by the questions exploding through her mind; there was so much she didn’t know about Kasius, no matter how much she felt like she knew him.

_What is this? What is this?_

“You needn’t come; the meeting is in regards to the mission on Contraxia, doubtlessly your best place is here working on wedding preparations.”

“We were supposed to meet with the tailor today,” Majia replied, testily.

“I cannot be prevailed upon to explain to you that the security of my father’s empire takes precedence over our wedding robes. Have him come back tomorrow.”

“He may not have the time.”

“Oh, and can he not make the time for his rulers?” Kasius snapped. “Sinara, you’ll accompany me to the military headquarters as my security detail.”

Sinara had to say she was surprised that he wanted her back on as his guard, it seemed quite silly after the speech he’d given last night about not wanting her in harm’s way. She was, of course, willing to do what he asked of her, it was the least she could do. But she got the distinct feeling that something odd was brewing in this place.

**Kasius:**

There was no meeting at the military headquarters. Well, there had been one, yesterday afternoon, but they had no need of him today. Majia would probably find out about that soon enough, but not soon enough to stop him.

It was a warm and brilliantly sunny day; the light shimmered across the dark, glossy paving stones. The sky was clear of clouds above them, and several of Hala’s moons were visible across the sky.

Sinara had stopped short, just in front of him outside of the compound’s gates, she was looking down the hill, examining the buildings below them.

“A marvelous view don’t you think?” He asked as he drew level with her.

“Which one is the defense headquarters?” She asked, seemingly ignoring his comment.

“There isn’t one, actually,” Kasius said lightly. “Somehow I doubt spending more time standing in my father’s court will be of use to you.”

Sinara didn’t even display any sign that she heard him at all, she continued staring at him expectantly, standing completely, unnervingly still.

“Shall we?” he motioned towards the walkway ahead of them, winding down the hill and into the city.

Sinara nodded sharply and began walking in the direction he indicated so suddenly that it took him a few moments to process what was happening; he had to jog a few steps to catch up with her. It would occur to him later that the future ruler of an empire should make an effort not to look as ridiculous as he doubtlessly did.

“You aren’t angry that I misled you, are you? If I had known that Majia was going to be here this morning, I might’ve told you earlier. It’s best for us to be out of the way, for now, my father would not be understanding, you see.”

Sinara nodded, neither confirmed or denying if he’d upset her; but she seemed mostly focused on examining the trees that lined the street and the smooth, blue stone paving the way.

They continued in silence for several minutes; it wasn’t exactly a comfortable sort of silence, the weight of unknowns was a palpable barrier to conversation. So many months of wishing he could speak to Sinara about so many things; he was given this second chance, but what could he tell her when she remembered nothing? He had to put quite some effort into shoving down resentment— of course, it was something no one had control over, so the guilt at his own impatience drowned out his resentment.

“You’re getting married,” Sinara said finally in her signature manner, neither questioning, nor not commenting, but somewhere in between.

It caught Kasius off guard; he hadn’t anticipated that that would be her first question.

“Yes, to Majia, who you met last night and this morning.”

Sinara gave him a pointed look that seemed to demand if he thought she was an idiot. “And your brother was killed?”

Kasius nodded, a strange feeling coming over him; the one person he’d shared that secret with was completely oblivious. “Yes.” He hesitated for a moment, glancing around at the abandoned street for any onlookers. “Though at my hands, not the Destroyer of Worlds.”

Sinara kept walking for a short moment before stepping in front of him and stopping. She didn’t necessarily look shocked; if he didn’t know better, he might’ve thought she looked impressed.

“Why?”

“He wanted to hire you as his own warrior.”

Now she looked a little surprised. “Did I want to?”

Kasius honestly didn’t know, Sinara had never told him. Though it was a strong possibility; they had been having in a disagreement.

“Perhaps, you were cross with me that day.”

“Why?” Sinara continued.

Kasius grimaced and motioned for her to continue walking if only so he wouldn’t have to look at her while he told her what had happened. “The Destroyer of Worlds traveled through time.” He began, explaining the history of Terra and the sudden appearance of the Destroyer and her allies at the Lighthouse, how he’d captured three of the time travelers, SHIELD; made two of them fighters in his arena, and the third his servitor.

“And?” Sinara prompted when he reached a particularly long pause.

“At the Lighthouse, we had a business of selling Inhumans— Terrans with powers, to the wealthy of the galaxy. One day it would have made us wealthier than the Kree Empire itself, particularly if I’d sold the Destroyer.”

Sinara remained silent through his next pause, though this was likely because her attention was momentarily stolen by an open-air market on the next street over. She slowed for a moment to examine the display from a distance.

“My brother attended the auction for the Destroyer, and demanded that to prove her skills, the Destroyer face my best Kree warrior in a fight to the death.”

Sinara’s attention snapped back to Kasius, anger immediately flaring up. Her hand wrapped around his wrist in an iron grasp. “That’s how this happened?”

Fear seized up in Kasius’s chest at the look in her eyes; he stumbled over his words as he tried to quell her anger. “What? Of course not! That doesn’t even make sense!”

Seeming to realize this, Sinara loosened her grip on his wrist and let her hand fall back to her side.

“I ordered you to fight the Destroyer but in the battle, her SHIELD allies helped her to escape, and the fight was incomplete, you escaped unscathed.”

Sinara stepped away from him entirely. “That’s hardly better.”

'“I would never have agreed to Faulnak’s idea had I not known how it was going to turn out,” Kasius explained. “You see, I had a seer, a woman who had accurately predicted every happening on the Lighthouse, she told me of the Destroyer, of the fight, I was reasonably certain, though not entirely, that you’d escape unscathed.”

“A fortuneteller?” Sinara sneered, she was angry, and confused, and possibly a little panicked.

It occurred to Kasius that after her plea, after her confession that he was the only person she remembered that she could trust; perhaps this had not been the right story, to begin with.

“Not a fortune teller, a time traveler who had lived it.”

Sinara thought for a long moment as though working through the logic in her mind before nodding.

“All right. Then what?”

“We tried to recapture the Destroyer and her friends, but they escaped to the surface. In the meantime, you had killed Faulnak’s guard.”

“Why?” Sinara asked.

“Unclear,” Kasius replied. “But it significantly impressed my brother, and down a guard, he offered you a spot. I didn’t let him get far into his offer.”

Sinara said nothing for a long moment, considering the story. “And I forgave you?”

Kasius tried desperately not to flush at the question, and the memory it brought to mind. But he could feel the heat rising through his neck, uncomfortable under his shirt collar. “I think so; we didn’t discuss it after.”

Sinara tilted her head, curious, but because she didn’t demand an explanation, he didn’t offer one. Eventually, she straightened her head almost suddenly and looked him up and down in thinly veiled surprise. But, she didn’t comment on whatever was running through her mind, she changed the subject.

“I’d like to see the water before we go back.”

Kasius shook his head a bit as though to clear before gesturing down the street again, indicating their path through the city. “Of course.”

The tension had been broken, somehow, by the bickering. Sinara followed him through several winding streets in silence; he was absorbed in watching her watch the city as they passed by. Her approach wasn’t one of wonder like a child’s, but one of meticulous curiosity. The look in her eyes so focused it was as though she were trying to burn the city’s image into her brain, as though every answer to every question she must have could be found in the white and blue stone, or the green plants and brilliant purple and orange flowers.

His chest felt like it was inflating with the sudden rush of relief, of contentment and love.

_Oh, how he’d missed her._

When he told her so, she responded only with an uncertain look before returning her focus to the street in front of them.

_How he loved her._

Perhaps, he would wait just a little longer on that part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Like I said, I'm super busy the next few weeks and won't be able to write as much as I'd like to :( 
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> ~Cartwen


	10. Execution Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kasius watches an execution and Sinara thinks about questions.

**Kasius:**

  
Majia was tapping her finger rhythmically on the arm of her chair— it was deafening in the dead silence of the throne room, it seemed to reverberate, the empty, domed room magnifying the sound tenfold. No one else was speaking; his father was reading a report, sitting on the throne beside him in the centre of the dais. Sinara was standing behind them, trying to be inconspicuous in reading the report over Taryan’s shoulder, who, fortunately, hadn’t seemed to notice.

  
Kasius shuddered involuntarily; reflecting momentarily on his father kept the room far too cold through the whole year, disregarding everyone else in the room. And of course, it would be considered impolite to wear his outdoor clothes in the throne room.  
Majia, however, looked at him in concern, her tapping pausing as she reached out to tap his arm.

  
“Try not to be crazy right now, would you?” Majia hissed.

  
“It’s not my fault that it’s freezing in here right now.” Kasius retorted. “Must you be so difficult all the time.”

  
“Must I remind you, the second time I met you, you had a ten minute breakdown. I worry about you.”

  
“Don’t.”

  
There was a loud _clang_ just behind him, he and Majia whirled around in shock. Sinara had dropped one of her spheres on the stone dais, breaking the relative quiet in the room.

  
Taryan swore. “How incompetent are you, girl?”

  
Sinara said nothing, merely inclining her head in the way of an apology before stooping to pick up the orb and resuming her position behind the chairs.

  
“Kasius, would you dismiss the guttersnipe,” His father hesitated a long moment before adding. “—Please.”

  
It didn’t sound much like a request, not that he was amenable to the idea, ordered or not.

  
“Let us try for some patience, Sinara has a lot to relearn.”

  
“My mistake, I wasn’t aware that I had to accommodate for that as well as running an empire, I do wish you’d told me.”

  
“Listen, sir—”

  
“ _Silence, Kasius!_ ” Taryan cut him off, biting venom seeping into his voice. “I told you—”

Sinara stepped into his field of vision, standing between himself and Taryan; his chest spasmed in fear distracting him from whatever else his father was saying. He shot out of his seat, stumbling over the leg of his chair on his way to stepping in front of her. His hands reached up and gripped her upper arms perhaps a little tighter than was entirely necessary. She was looking at him with a bemused expression.

  
“What?” Sinara demanded the quietness of her voice underscoring the irritation in her tone. The glint in her eyes seeming to dare him to explain himself, insinuating that he shouldn’t have interfered.

  
“I just—” Kasius began, knowing full well that he was flailing in his own explanation.

“Oh for the love of—” Majia interrupted.

  
“Silence, all of you!” Taryan snapped, interrupting Majia in turn. “We have company.”

  
Kasius allowed his hands to fall from Sinara’s shoulders as they both turned towards the entrance of the room. Kasius stayed carefully halfway in front of Sinara. Rastak and several other military advisors had entered, with soldiers and two prisoners in tow.  
“What’s going on?” Majia demanded, half-rising from her chair. If Kasius didn’t know better, he would say that she was regarding the newcomers with fear.

  
“Not to worry,” Taryan told her, his voice taking on a strange, nearly affectionate tone directed at her. Kasius stiffened at the relative warmth of his father’s tone, the familiar jealousy flickering to life somewhere in his head. He glanced over at Majia who had settled back in her seat at his father’s assurances. She glanced over at him, expression calm everywhere but in her eyes which glinted with residual fear.

  
“Our security leaks,” Taryan said with the air of someone presenting a great discovery, he began making his way down the dais to stand in front of the prisoners presented to him.

Kasius suppressed a sigh, overcome with an extreme sense of reluctance to bear witness to his father killing more of his soldiers. It wasn’t even midday!

  
He moved back to his seat and sat back down, tiredly turning his attention to the scene in front of him.

  
The guards forced their prisoners to their knees as Taryan continued to stalk towards them. Kasius glanced over at Majia; all traces of fear had left her face, and she was watching the scene looking with a bored skepticism.

  
“What’s this?” Sinara asked quietly; she hadn’t moved from her position beside his chair.

“These men are traitors,” Majia explained, for once not sounding spiteful. “They gave away military secrets about an espionage mission to Praxius.”

  
“To where?”

  
“Praxius is a planet,” Kasius explained, cutting off Majia’s emphatic sigh.

“This is their execution.” Majia finished.

  
Kasius turned his attention back to his father; he held out his hand towards one of his advisors— Kasius could never remember his name, but it was horribly long and confusing, much like any speech he gave at security council meetings. The advisor handing Taryan a long sword, drawn from his own belt.

  
Taryan weighed the sword in his hand for a long moment, seeming to consider if it was a good fit, only to quickly turn it on the first prisoner, running the blade through the prisoner’s chest with a wet sounding thud. Blood spurted from the prisoner’s chest, and he slumped to the floor as Taryan pulled the blade back; the silver metal was dripping from tip to hilt with the same blue liquid currently pooling on the floor at his feet.

  
Kasius felt faintly nauseous, he was hardly squeamish, but honestly, he’d only just finished breakfast an hour ago. It was much too soon for these gruesome acts.

  
Taryan stopped in front of the second prisoner. “Were there any others?”  
The prisoner said nothing, staring back at Taryan, seemingly unfazed by the thought of his own death.

  
“Are there others?” Taryan demanded.

  
The prisoner said nothing for some time, continuing to meet the emperor’s eyes with a blank look. “No. It was just us.” His gaze broke, and his eyes flicked towards the dais; scanning over Kasius and Majia briefly.

  
“Who did you report to?” Taryan demanded, pressing the tip of his sword against the prisoner’s throat and forcing the prisoner to look towards him.

  
The prisoner stayed silent.

  
“Your actions cost our army nearly a hundred men. You cannot save yourself or your associates, but you can make amends for what you did.”

  
“No.”

  
Taryan let the sword fall away from the prisoner as he turned towards the dais. “Very well, we'll find out in quickly anyways. Sinara.”

  
Kasius straightened, instantly understanding what his father wanted her to do. He turned towards Sinara who hadn’t moved; she was staring at Taryan, awaiting further information.

  
“This is unnecessary.” Kasius snapped. “Leave her be.”

  
“She should make herself useful, wouldn’t you agree, Sinara?” His voice burned with condescending spite.

  
Sinara glanced at Kasius, looking for the appropriate response, she didn’t look offending, she wouldn’t— she just looked confused.

  
“Go ahead, girl, kill the traitor. After all, you did cause this whole mess, with your actions on Contraxia.”

  
Sinara squared her shoulders, turning towards Taryan. “Did I?” She demanded, her tone defiant.

  
“Kree don’t get captured, girl, and yet you did. I always thought you were more of a warrior than my spineless son.”

  
Kasius opened his mouth, ready to demand his father’s silence. Anger was boiling up inside him at Taryan’s insults. But Sinara was distracted, looking between the orbs in her hand and the prisoner as though she was considering doing what Taryan asked.

  
Kasius felt irrationally afraid at the gesture, even if there was nothing new, or dangerous about what she was doing. He’d watched her intimidate dozens of Terrans in the same way with a sense of pride, which of course hadn’t ended well.

  
Sinara raised her hand to eye level and straightened her fingers; the orbs shot from her palms, circling each other in their path towards the prisoner, weaving almost elegantly around Taryan and his advisors before finding their place in the chest of the prisoner with another wet thud. The orbs returned to her hands moments later, coated in the prisoner’s blood. Sinara kept her eyes trained on her hands with a strange, awed, focus until the orbs returned to her hands. She turned her gaze to Kasius, no longer looking quite so confused.

  
He felt a strange sense of relief somewhere under the anxiety; perhaps because she didn’t look as sad or nervous as she had since her return. Or perhaps because this was the person he recognized more than any of the others he’d seen from her since her return.

  
Nonetheless, his own shock must have shown on his face because her glare only intensified.

  
“I’m not a child, sir,” she paused and returned her gaze to Kasius. “Kasius.”

Taryan began to laugh, suddenly, reminiscent of his elder son, or more nearly, _that’s where Faulnak learned that._

  
Kasius glanced at Sinara, briefly imagining that she would return the glance acknowledging how eerily similar the two were. But of course, she had no memory of Faulnak. He briefly considered saying something to her in the way of an apology.

Instead, he said; “Clean this up.”

**Sinara:**

  
The formal dining room was too dimly lit for Sinara’s taste; she could barely make out Majia, sitting beside her with only the light from the candles at the center of the table. Unfortunately, all evidence seemed to indicate that the Emperor was fond of holding his dinner meetings in the dark. Not that it was a particularly fascinating meeting either, Taryan had made it out to be something of some importance; discussing their next moves on Praxius. So far all the Emperor and his advisors had succeeded in doing was drinking too much wine and speaking about nothing at an increasingly high volume.

  
The burst of energy, certainty, and calm she’d had early had melted away under the pressure of the questions she still had. Taryan’s words had reminded her of what she was asking of Kasius, and his family, no matter how little they seemed like one.

  
_She should make herself useful._  
_How incompetent are you, girl?_  
_I wasn’t aware I had to accommodate for that._

  
The thoughts had been ringing through her head, over and over, every time she turned to Kasius to ask him a question. Despite his previous assurances, her incompetence must be tiresome.

  
The conversation had turned to loud, lewd jokes, after listening for a moment Sinara surmised it was about the wedding, not that she had a clear idea of what that involved. But, by Kasius’s strained, but polite smile and Majia’s glower, the other attendees of the dinner were mocking them.

  
The idea of it made her uneasy.

  
When the conversation moved onto to talking about the late Faulnak, whom Sinara gather was widely admired by her people, Sinara turned to Majia and muttered. “Tell me about a wedding ceremony.”

  
Majia turned to her, finally not giving her the tone of surprise that most of her questions had been met with. “In elite circles, the families pledge their honor and loyalty to each other in a preliminary ceremony; then the couple does the same.”

  
Sinara ignored Kasius’s curious glance and continued to listen as Majia described the second part of the ceremony, which was significantly stranger.

  
“After the ceremony, the couple is left alone, and they must use knives made in their families’ armories, dipped in liquid gold to mark each other’s wrist and neck.” She went on to explain that the gold would stay as a sort of stain along the scar from the wound. “Popular legend has it that consummating the marriage will instantly heal turn your marks to scars, but most just use healing gel. Such things are much too vulgar when you’re expected at the wedding feast and festivities afterward.”

  
Sinara wasn’t sure if Majia was trying to put on over on her, but she wasn’t inclined to think too much more about it. It was far too loud and warm in the room, and her exhaustion was beginning to manifest in a dull headache and faint nausea. She focused her gaze on the tablecloth, examining the minuscule criss-cross weaving of its threads, forcing her eyes to stay open by concentrating them on the pattern. The loud voices around her began to fade into background noise, her mind altogether too exhausted to piece together the men’s drunken ramblings.

  
“Sinara?”

  
She jerked her gaze back to the table, immediately meeting Kasius’s eyes; he was looking at her with some concern and some suspicion, his tone sounded as though he’d been trying to get her attention for longer than was socially appropriate for her not to acknowledge.

  
“What?”

  
“Is everything all right?” He reached his hand across the table, setting his beside hers without touching it.

_She should make herself useful._  
_How incompetent are you, girl?_  
_I wasn’t aware I had to accommodate for that._  
_Shut it!_

“Can I be excused?”

  
Kasius frowned briefly. Clearly, he’d been hoping for something a bit more helpful. “Yes, do you wa—”

“Thank you.” Sinara cut him off, trying to shoot him a reassuring glance; he didn’t have to do all of this. But it likely looked a little more like a grimace.

She rose from her seat without further discussion and left the room through the serving door behind her.

  
She made her way to the elevators, then to the sixth floor; the dead silence of the palace was suddenly making her restless. When she reached Kasius’s suites, she began to make her way to her room, only to pause at the door to Kasius’s room. She pushed the door slightly ajar and crossed to the bed; she perched on the edge of it and stared out over the city.

As she continued to watch the lights, flickering on and flickering off throughout the buildings along the skyline, her mind emptied of all the noisy thoughts it had been filled with. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there before she was interrupted, time seemed to pass very quickly, but when his voice brought her back to reality, it felt as though a very long time had gone by.

“You disappeared from dinner,” Kasius commented as he sat beside her, implying that he wanted an explanation.

He’d have to be more specific if he wanted anything, she just shrugged in response. “You said I could.”

“You’re upset, then.” He decided, his ability to just _know_ added to her frustration, and she balled her hands into fists in her lap.

“What is it? Majia? My father? The others?” He paused for a long moment before adding; “Me?”

Sinara didn’t know how to respond to the question; she could barely even sort out her own feelings above the questions she always seemed to run up against. She was upset about the wedding, politics or not; it made her angry; every mention of it set her teeth on edge and sent blood rushing to her ears. So what? She was in love with him? All right. That was hardly his fault. And it was hardly something she should get herself into when she hadn’t been able to think straight in months anyways.

“I imagine it’s difficult, everyone talking at you all day as though you’re supposed to understand, but there are some things that you just can’t.” Kasius continued. “It’s not as though I’ve ever been through this, but I do, understand, the barrier between myself and others, not being able to understand them. Those who I work with have very different ideas of how to approach the affairs of the Empire.”

“I can tell.” Sinara interrupted, trying to squash down a feeling of annoyance. Who was he, coming to fix her up and then complaining about his own work? What an ass.

“Sinara…” Kasius trailed off without finishing his thought.

Sinara bit her lip, turning her gaze back to the city for a long moment before replying. “It’s difficult not to remember.”

Kasius said nothing for a long moment, but his silence seemed to suggest that he was hoping for something a little less obvious. But she couldn’t be less interested in talking through it with him. He must have known this; again, somehow, he just knew what everything she did meant. He reached out and pulled her against him as he leaned back until they were reclining against the excessive stack of pillows near the top of the bed. For several moments longer, he didn’t say anything, instead focusing instead on undoing the complicated braid she’d twisted her hair into hours and smoothing it out with his fingers.

“It’s frustrating.” He said finally, his hand continued to comb through her hair as he spoke.

“I’m sorry,” Sinara replied. “You don’t have to help me.”

  
Kasius breathed out in amusement. “I meant it’s frustrating for you. You coming back is the best thing that could have happened. Perhaps Majia has told you some of what happened while you were gone.”

“Nothing particularly helpful.”

  
“She never is, but, I felt so horribly empty after you… well, after whatever happened occurred. I was afraid when you fell asleep last night, and the one before, because you weren’t moving or talking, and it was like,” he trailed off suddenly as though catching himself in saying something he shouldn’t. “I don’t care if I answer a billion questions if it means you’re still here.”

“Thank you,” Sinara mumbled, her words partially stifled against his shoulder. A warm feeling was spreading through her whole body, erasing and relaxing the dreaded chill she’d felt at dinner. Of course, another long-winded speech from Kasius did almost nothing to solve her problems, but somehow it helped just to know that he existed. He didn’t seem in a rush for her to remember anything or uncomfortable with the idea that she didn’t understand him as well as he did her. Odd, because she had the strangest idea that Majia’s assessment of him; a demanding, unstable, narcissist was fairly accurate. But then again, Majia didn’t know that he was smart and surprisingly empathetic, and loyal, and safer than the rest of the galaxy.

“Perhaps you don’t need to ask a billion questions.” Kasius continued, pausing for a moment as though to check that she was listening to him. “Of course, I’d tell you anything.” He amended at her suspicious glance. “But there’s no need to live in the past; it’s far less frustrating to focus on what’s ahead.”

Sinara turned towards him, resting her head in the space between his neck and shoulder, her forehead pressing against his cheek. Altogether, it wasn’t bad advice, but she had to wonder what her future held here, soon enough he’d have his own family affairs to concern himself with.

The panicky nerves continued to dance about in her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no see, guys! Final exams are kicking my butt, honestly I can't remember a time when I wasn't either working or sleeping this week! I don't know when I'll have more updates, but I'm trying as hard as I can to keep it at least a weekly thing!  
> ~Cartwen


	11. The Week Of

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kasius has his makeup done and Sinara doesn't know how to ballroom dance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important Note/Warning! There is a little bit of violence at the end of this chapter.

_One Month Later_

**Kasius:**

His servant dusted the brush across the bridge of his nose lightly, spreading the white powder across his cheek with an expert hand. He had to focus on holding his breath so as not to breath in the excess powder flying off the brush as the servant continued spreading the powder across the sides of his nose.

There was a short knock at the door, Kasius raised his eyes to the mirror to watch the door behind him.

“Come in.”

The door opened slightly, and Majia peered in and snorted in amusement at the sight. “Are you going to be ready in an hour?”

Kasius ignored the question; his servant responded for him. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Has everyone arrived?” Kasius asked, meeting Majia’s eyes in the mirror.

“I don’t know. Our parents were in charge of greeting the guests.”

Kasius nodded slightly; his servant pulled the brush away from his face hastily so as not to smudge the powder.

“How long have you been here?” Majia asked, suspicion creeping into her tone.

“Two hours,” Kasius replied nonchalantly, pretending not to notice that she was mocking him.

“I hate you so much,” Majia said, but Kasius didn’t think she really meant it. She must be getting used to him by now.

“The tailor left your clothes in your room about an hour ago. Though I don’t think we’ll ever see him again, Sinara nearly killed him for entering the quarters unaccompanied.” Majia continued.

Kasius raised his eyebrows slightly, his servant sighed in annoyance, pulling the brush away from his face again.

“Is there a problem?” He snapped. _This girl_ _had some nerve._

“No, sir.” The servant amended quickly, continuing to brush powder onto his face with renewed concentration.

“Good.” He paused and looked at his reflection, making it clear that he was examining his servant’s work in the mirror, and watching how she shrank slightly realizing what he was doing.

_Good._

“Was there something else you needed, Majia?” Kasius asked, wishing she’d leave already, he’d be seeing entirely too much of her in the coming week, and he wasn’t ready to start with all that now.

“No,” Majia replied, but refused to take the hint and leave.

“Well, I’m sure you have things to do—”

“I’ve been ready for twenty minutes. I’d rather like to stay and watch you get your eyeliner done.”

“ _Out_.” Kasius snapped, waving his hand at her.

The assisting servant, standing still and silent, barely noticeable near the door, closed it in Majia’s face cutting off her vague protestations.

He truly was dreading the night’s festivities; the first of three nights of festivities leading up to the marriage ceremony. This one was to welcome the diplomatic guests to the city, so it was imperative that it went perfectly. He just hoped that Majia could keep a lid on for the rest of the evening. But it was more what the party meant than the guests he was dreading; each party seemed to be a tick closer on a countdown clock to when he would lose everything again.

He and Sinara hadn’t discussed it, even while she’d rarely left his side in a month and had been present for countless discussions, she seemed content to keep her thoughts to herself.

The servant moved onto to making up the area around his eyes brushing on the darker powder, in short, even strokes. He let his eyelids sag closed as he continued to contemplate his despair.

Sinara had improved at an incredible rate; she spent the days with him, learning about Kree society and trained with other soldiers in the early mornings, she learned or remembered, quickly.

Their lives weren’t so different now as they were on the Lighthouse with the exception of Taryan, plaguing him at every step. Sinara had decided that she preferred sleeping in his room within a week of returning; he’d gotten to his quarters late after a council session to find her fast asleep.

He smiled, amused by the memory, in classic Sinara fashion, she took what he would call significant— bordering on drastic, actions without explaining what she was doing. It was frustrating, but he knew he was no better; he didn’t want her to love him because she thought it would help her get back to being her former self.

Unfortunately, with the wedding around the corner, time was running out on that front.

As if on cue for that particular thought, the door swung open, Majia again.

“Why aren’t you dressed?” she demanded. “Do you really sit here for three hours every day?” 

“I'm just finishing now, ma’am.” The servant responded. “There you go, sir.”

Kasius stood and turned towards Majia was staring at him reproachfully. “Let’s go please.”

When he emerged from his chambers, having changed into his robes for the party, Majia and Sinara were waiting in the sitting room, seated on couches opposite each other in complete silence. Sinara was sitting with her back to him and didn’t turn around when he entered.

Majia was wearing all gold in accordance with the traditional dress for a bride, Kasius thought it was a bit too much of one color that didn’t work well with Majia’s paler complexion.

She snorted when he appeared. Clearly, she didn’t appreciate his clothing either.

“Let’s get this over with.” She got up and crossed to him, watching him expectantly until he offered his arm to her.

Sinara still hadn’t moved from the sofa or showed any indication that she knew that there were others in the room.

“Sinara, aren’t you coming?” Majia asked. “I certainly hope so; it took me fifteen minutes to get all your hair up.”

Sinara stood and turned towards them looking surprised, as though she’d been completely distracted. She was wearing a dress uniform, white pants, and a shirt; her hair was pinned up in some elaborate knot— Majia’s doing. She winced, and pinched the bridge of her nose at the point between her eyes, as though in pain. It was a familiar gesture that she insisted was nothing when he asked what she was doing. She let her hand fall and refocused on them, reassuming a neutral expression.

“Yes, we should go.”

The party was being held in one of the great halls on the first floor of the palace, and it was in full swing when they arrived. They had to wait outside until they were announced to the guests but Kasius could hear the roar of the music and chatter quite well, even through the stone walls. He could hear one of his father’s servants announcing them, shouting over the din as the door swung open.

The chatter instantly fell silent in the room as everyone turned to acknowledge their presence with a brief moment of silence. Majia immediately raised her hand in a gesture prompting them to carry on, but they had barely stepped into the room before guests were jostling to introduce themselves.

Sinara stepped in front of him and Majia, her stare warning those who came near without an introducer to stay away. He stood back, shoving down the urge to intervene, he’d learned his lesson during the execution; he had to act as though nothing had happened to her, no matter how uncomfortable it was.

“Find someone to introduce you.” She told one foreigner approaching her. “You’d do well to adhere to local custom.”

The guest ignored her, trying to move past her. Sinara grabbed him and dragged him back in front of her.

“Sir, if you come any closer I’ll have you escorted out.”

The next few hours were a blur of introductions, uncomfortable questions and largely forced laughter at the jokes of diplomats he couldn’t afford to offend. He’d lost count of the number of people he’d promised to speak further within the coming days about whatever it was they wanted to put in with the Kree emperor, but he was sure he wouldn’t have time for all of them.

The introductions eventually gave way to dinner where he was seated with the most important officials present; his father, officials from Majia’s home city, and the leaders of other planets. Their conversation consisted mostly of family matters, sounding as though they were catching up like old acquaintances with the subtle cruelty Kasius knew politicians communicated in. So, he sincerely had no idea what had actually been said and not said, implied and not implied by the time the meal had ended. 

After dinner the band struck up again, pulling people away from their dinner conversations and dealings to the dance floor, where, Kasius suspected, new dealings were being taken up. Majia insisted that they dance together for the first few songs because she didn’t want them to appear ‘miserable’ like he always made it seem.

The music was slow, and the steps of the dance were easy which was unfortunate because nothing kept his focus but the overwhelming pressure that surrounding him. In the stares of the diplomats, the gaze of his father from his seat at the table and the feeling on Majia’s hand in his. _Why on Earth had he ever wanted to come back to this?_

He glanced over Majia’s shoulder to where Sinara was standing, just off the dance floor. She had been watching them, but her eyes darted elsewhere as soon as he looked at her. If he didn’t know better, he would say she was making a show of looking around the room for signs of danger.

Majia steered them around in a semicircle, making a noise of irritation at his distraction; he lost sight of Sinara.

“You could just make things easier for yourself and tell her.” Majia pointed out. “Every day you wait is how much angrier she’ll be at you when she figures it out.”

“We’ll not talk about this here. Or anywhere else, ever. I’m not going to discuss such things with my fiancée.”

“Why not, I have to live the rest of my life with both of you.” Majia hissed. “Besides, it might help if you dropped the ‘you’re my guard, who I sleep with, and fret over, but we’re professional colleagues act. She’s not an idiot—”

“I am not sleeping with her.” Kasius hissed, cautious to keep his voice as low as possible.

“Oh, my mistake, I didn’t realize your room was a shortcut between her room and the hallway.” Majia’s voice was loud enough to attract the stares of a few dancers nearby, who all turned to their partners and began whispering, probably about the odds of them making it to the wedding day.

_Wonderful._

“You're confusing, and a fool. And your time is running out.” Majia said, pulling away as the song ended. “Three dances, we’re all done.”

**Sinara:**

Sinara had decided that she hated parties within a few minutes of being there, hours later, she was tired and getting a dull headache from the incessantly loud music. It was unlikely that Kasius would tell her that he wanted to leave any time soon, but she still hoped he would. This was ridiculous; the shoes for her dress uniform were uncomfortable, and she didn’t want to keep thinking about the damned wedding.

“Sinara,” she turned her head to the left, to find that Kasius had materialized beside her. She nodded a greeting to him and turned back towards the dance floor.

“Are you enjoying the festivities?” he asked, amusement in his voice, so she took it her ensuing glare conveyed the message well enough. “Majia’s left me to dance with her brother-in-law.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll have all her attention on your holiday next week,” Sinara reassured him, aware that she sounded somewhat mechanical.

Kasius was quiet for a long moment, fidgeting with his hands as though he were uncomfortable. Sinara scanned the room again, looking for a source of discomfort, perhaps he didn’t feel safe. She certainly didn’t; there were far too many elements in this room to keep track of, too many bodies moving about, too many conversations to try and listen for danger. She knew it was the perfect environment to concoct dangerous schemes without arousing suspicion— she’d certainly take the opportunity if it were up to her.

“Will you dance with me?” Kasius asked abruptly, talking so quickly that it took a moment to parse together what sounds he’d just made.

She was a bit surprised her stomach doing strange flips for a moment before her more logical mind took control; there were a lot of people here looking for his attention tonight. She could hardly blame him for wanting to keep busy, but she’d picked up enough from Taryan’s attitude to know that this was hardly a good way for him to go about it.

“I’m working.”

“Yes, for me.”

He didn’t wait for her response before pulling her the few remaining feet onto the dance floor and wrapping his arm halfway around her upper back. She glanced at the pair next to them and mirrored the other woman’s position, laying her arm over his and putting her hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t remember how to do this.” Sinara reminded him.

“It’s far preferable to speaking to Majia’s mother.” Kasius murmured, pulling her other hand into his and raising it to about shoulder level, keeping his elbow bent. He stepped backward with his right foot as new music began, she stumbled backward to avoid getting stepped on, but she soon found the steps were a simple pattern of a step backward and a step to the side as they moved in a circle. Soon she wasn’t focusing on learning to do and was able to focus on all the confused stares following Kasius around the room. He, however, seemed quite adept at ignoring them.

“Thank you,” Kasius muttered, tightening his grip around her back and pulling her closer, to the point where she was nearly leaning against him.

She tried to push the thought of how fast her heart was going, out of her mind. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop her from feeling it. No matter how hard she tried to talk herself out of those feelings, she couldn’t.

She wasn’t an idiot. She could put two and two together; she’d been in his room at the Lighthouse, and she’d seen his expression on several occasions when she asked questions about their time there. Suffice to say she had a pretty clear idea of what they used to do at the Lighthouse

But, she’d been away for some time, and he was getting married, and she had no concrete evidence that their affair had gone beyond them sleeping together. Perhaps it would be better for her just to move on.

“Is everything all right?” Kasius asked, his grip on her raised hand tightening slightly. She nodded.

“I'm concentrating on not stepping on you.” She said, refusing to meet his eyes and staring over his shoulders and watching all the other dancers twirl their partners away from them in a flurry of twirling fabric, and then reel them back in. They’d done it as if on cue, all at once, she’d never seen anything like it.

“Practice,” Kasius said, answering the question that popped into her mind before she could even open her mouth to voice it. “For many of these people, this all they do, night after night, attending functions.”

 _That must be awful._ Sinara thought privately, simply nodding in response to Kasius’s statement.

“I’m out of practice myself.” Kasius continued, as though searching for something to talk about. “The Lighthouse was far too cramped for such things.”

“There must have been very little to do there, then,” Sinara replied, drily.

She honestly didn’t _hate_ this dance, but, she could have lived well enough without it. Why had she said that? Because, unconsciously, she began hoping that might jump on the opportunity to talk more about the Lighthouse beyond the Inhuman auctions, and tireless details of the people there? When that thought occurred to her that she wanted him to, she nearly swore out loud.

What did she want him to say? ' _Oh, well, Sinara, without the rest of the court, the most exciting thing we could do was have sex. I wish you’d stop reminding me; the memory makes me so uncomfortable' ?_

Instead of saying that, or anything else of the same theme, he just laughed, said her name, and fell into amused silence.

After a beat, she glanced up at him, wondering if he would follow up ‘Sinara’ with another statement. His eyes were smiling but seemed to grow sadder as they continued to look into hers. The old thought; _leave, don’t do this to him_ , was just beginning to form in her mind along with the familiar sick feeling in her stomach, when her thoughts were interrupted.

Several people somewhere in the crowd of dancing people gasped, followed by the someone in the crowd screamed, bone-chilling terror in the sound. Sinara tried to pull back, and pull Kasius somewhere else, but they were engulfed in a crowd as confused as she was, pushing them in every direction and confusing her with their panicked chatter.

Two explosions rang out, no, not explosions, shots.

Kasius dropped to his knees, pulling her down with him. Those around them were doing the same, getting lower to the ground and covering their heads.

Sinara tried to stand, to access the weapons hidden in the belt of her uniform, but Kasius was leaning on her too heavily for her to move. He was breathing unevenly, most likely panicking from what she knew of him, but the sound was so intensely confusing that she couldn’t say if more shots were fired, or what anyone else was saying.

She turned her head to the side, forcing her eyes to open, fighting against the dominant part of her that didn’t want to see herself die… _again_ , she supposed. Soldiers were storming the stage, swarming the lone figure still standing, who was holding a gun.

Someone moved in front of her, blocking her line of vision and she lost track of what was happening.

Her back hurt, the pain intensifying with every passing second, in a single spot on the back of her right ribcage.

It felt like someone had struck her, or no, it felt like the area was on fire, maybe both, she didn’t know.

_Did I just get shot?_

She reached her free arm around her back and touched the area; it came away with no blood, and the contact hadn’t improved or worsen the pain. Nonetheless, it was difficult to breathe through it.

_What the hell?_

“Kasius.” She managed, pulling away from him slightly, trying to force air into her lungs.

He only slumped forward onto her, nearly knocking her backward.

“Kasius!” She repeated, lowering the hand she had around his neck and allowing it to slide away down the right side of his back, intending to use it to brace herself on the floor.

The hand came away with blood on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> ~Cartwen


	12. You Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sinara and Majia have it out and a drugged Kasius tries to make sense of what happened to him.

**Sinara:**

The doctors helped Kasius into a private room, leaving a trail of blood across the glossy, marble floor. One of the doctors’ aides slammed the door in their faces, shutting them in the hallway, cutting off all Majia’s shrill questions. Sinara was sure that if she weren’t out of breath, she’d have a few questions of her own. She was also sure that if Majia weren’t holding her up, she would collapse from how badly it hurt to breathe.

She was vaguely aware that Taryan, his lackeys, and Majia’s family were with them; her attention focused on them as they began to argue.

“What’s the meaning of this Taryan?” Majia’s father demanded.

“Why are we being shut in here?”

Her vision seemed to be cutting in and out like a bad video connection, and sounds seemed to be coming from very far away despite being very loud.

“Do you want to sit down?” Majia asked her; her voice sounded quieter and closer than the shrill demands of her family. When Sinara didn’t respond, Majia pulled her a bit away from the group. “Sit down; there’s a wall behind you.”

Sinara did as she was told, sliding down the wall until she hit the floor, her knees bent up to her chest. She rested her forehead against her knees, trying to slow her breathing, hoping that it would do something to lessen the pain.

She was vaguely aware of Majia lowering herself to the floor to sit beside her.

“How are you feeling?” she asked as though she already knew the answer.

“Like I’m dying.” Sinara managed, not even trying to keep the cruel edge out of her voice.

“Nothing new for you, then,” Majia commented, seeming utterly unconcerned for her.

Sinara opened her eyes; staring at the blood trail across the floor through the gap between her knees, the contrast of white and blue the only thing clear through her fuzzy vision.

A horrible thought occurred to her; horrible enough to clear her mind for a moment.

“Majia!”

“What?”

“Restricted blood flow to the brain, causes memory loss. Do your doctors know that?”

Majia didn’t respond for a long time, making only an amused sound in her throat.

 _“Do they know that?”_ Sinara repeated, forcing herself to sit upright. “They have to make sure that—”

“They know, calm the hell down.” Majia interrupted. “It’s a fundamental, medical principle. He’s going to be fine, just give them some time. He wasn’t that badly hurt.”

“There’s so much blood.” Sinara protested, not quite believing the last bit. The pain was seeping back into her mind, pushing the panic to the side. She groaned, wrapping her arms around herself until her hand covered the spot on her back that hurt the worst.

“What’s happening to me?”

“You’re fine; it’s just in your head. Just try and relax.” Majia replied, sounding completely disinterested. ‘’It’ll be over any second now.”

Sinara didn’t think panic attacks were supposed to be this specifically painful, but she didn’t particularly feel up to arguing the point.

But, Majia wasn’t wrong, after a few more moments, the pain began to fade away and then disappeared all at once.

She gasped air back into her lungs, and save the slightly breathless feeling she was left with, it was as though nothing had ever happened.

_Was this a strange side effect of reincarnation? Some sort of strange, nervous reaction?_

She certainly wasn’t going to ask Majia about it. Perhaps it wasn’t worth mentioning, even to Kasius, she didn’t want to end up in any trouble. Besides, he most certainly would have his own set of real health issues to worry about the coming weeks without her bothering him with the fact that she might be losing her mind.

“All better?” Majia asked, irritatingly smug at having been inarguably correct; while Sinara was grateful for being about to breathe, continuing might have been worth it just to prove her wrong.

Instead, she just nodded, distracting herself with trying to discover what was going on. Taryan and the others were congregated at the other end of the hallway; there was no one else in sight, the only door off the hallway besides its entrance led to wherever the doctors had brought Kasius. She was sitting on the floor, but couldn’t quite remember sitting down, or walking into the hallway; she found there was a short, blank period in her mind between the party and asking Majia about the blood. She quickly convinced herself that it was because she’d been in pain, and she’d been scared.

_It’s not like before; it isn’t. It can’t be._

The door behind them swung open, and one of the doctors’ aides appeared, shutting the door behind her. Majia shot to her feet first, demanding to know what was going on, Sinara was at her shoulder moments later delayed only by her shaking legs. Taryan drifted over, quickly, but with less urgency than Sinara thought was entirely appropriate.

“It will be some time yet.” The aide informed them. “The bullet is in his upper, right, lung and he’s lost a lot of blood, but he’ll live, and it will take us some time to patch him up.”

“I can stay here,” Majia told Taryan, not missing a beat after the nurse gave her report. “I’m sure they’re in need of your help downstairs. I’ll keep this guard,” Majia indicated Sinara. “For my protection, she’s frail, probably won’t be of much use to you in catching the perpetrator.”

Taryan glared at her before nodding to Majia and turning to leave, bringing Majia’s family and his guards with him.

“Frail?” Sinara sneered, when the door shut behind the Emperor, taking three steps backward until her back pressed against the cold, stone wall and crossing her arms tightly over her chest.

Majia glared at her. “I thought you might want to be here.” 

“I hurt whoever hurts him.”

“I’m sure he’d rather you be safe in here,” Majia replied. “I’m just trying to help you, idiot.”

“Nothing you could do would ever help me.” Sinara snapped. She understood the situation, Kasius and Majia were political officials and allies. But that didn’t make all of this fair to her.

“You’re not the only one who cares about him.”

“You threatened him. He told me. You told me.” Sinara retorted.

“He’s the only good one in this entire palace; he’ll make a good leader.”

 _She doesn’t know about Faulnak._ Sinara thought with some satisfaction. _I know something she doesn’t._

“He’s hardly my soulmate, but he’s good.”

Sinara snorted at the term; she hardly expected something so fantastical from Majia.

“I’m serious. Mine is dead.”

“Your what?” Sinara demanded flatly.

“Soulmate.”

Sinara glared at her, _what sort of affluent childish nonsense is she on about?_

“I’m not a child.”

Majia sighed, muttering something under her breath that sounded vaguely like ‘Damn it, Kasius.’

“You exhaust me,” Majia said, louder this time, slumping against the opposite wall. “It’s true, a rare occurrence these days, and even rarer to find them but, nonetheless, an old psychobiological connection. I’m not a scientist, don’t ask me for the full run-down.”

Sinara was almost certain she was being played for a fool. Nonetheless, her curiosity outran her pride.

“How would one even be able to tell?”

“You feel their pain,” Majia replied simply. “You know when you feel things with no discernable cause?”

 _Obviously_. Sinara thought, and it must have shown in her expression as well as Majia returned the look with one that seemed to say; _told you so._

Some picture was beginning to form in Sinara’s mind; a phantom pain in the lung, a gunshot in the lung. The mysterious ache in her chest she’d noticed at the Lighthouse with his return to Hala after losing everything.

“Mine was sick a lot, so it wasn’t hard to find her.” Majia continued, as though she was relaying what she’d eaten at the party, rather than an objectively tragic story. “Unfortunately, she didn’t make it past twenty-five years old. It’s what Kasius and I have in common, grief; he was grieving for his soulmate when I met him.”

The strange sense of cautious, irrational hope building at the back of her mind deflated instantly.

“Kasius had a soulmate?”

Majia nodded, watching her with a strange, intense look that only pushed Sinara’s suspicions that Majia was up to something, perhaps fooling her.

“They died?” Sinara clarified, halfway convinced if only because that sort of grief could undoubtedly make Kasius act as he did.

“She did, yes,” Majia replied, her voice tight, suddenly very interested in the elaborate silver pattern painted across the stone.

Evidently, she had woefully misunderstood what was going on between them, here and at the Lighthouse. There were a lot of things that were difficult to believe about the conversation, but perhaps the most unbelievable was the insinuation that Kasius wouldn’t have told her something like that. That he would have excluded a whole person from the things he told her about the Lighthouse. He was so talkative. Certainly, he wouldn’t have been able to conceal something that meant so much to him unless it was simply too awful to talk about.

_Maybe it’s you, stupid._

_Impossible, I’m not dead!_ _This is stupid, and probably not real, just some incredibly attractive story for children._

“He never mentioned anyone to me,” Sinara replied stiffly.

Majia narrowed her eyes and pushed off the wall, moving towards the end of the hallway restlessly. “Well, yeah, that would be very weird.”

**Kasius:**

Kasius opened his eyes slowly; he wasn’t thinking anything in particular, he felt quite light and relaxed, slightly disoriented but not enough to be concerned, as though waking from a long night’s sleep. He was in his own bedroom, for some reason sleeping on the other side— Sinara’s side of the bed, closer to the door than the window.

The next thing he registered was how cold he was. The small discomfort weighed on him certainly more than was due, but he had to say, he wasn’t feeling very well, and he wished he could pinpoint where he’d been before falling asleep.

The sky was dark, the grey of morning beginning at the horizon, it must have been three, or four hundred hours but there were lights on in the room somewhere behind him, reflecting a transparent image of the room in the window.

It wouldn’t be late enough for training quite yet— _where was Sinara?_

He turned from the window, still moving at the languid pace that seemed to the be the extent of his muscles capabilities at the moment, scanning the vast expanse of empty room beyond the bed until he saw something that caught his eye.

It certainly was something, but he found his vision suddenly too blurry to figure out just what it was. He thought of saying something, just in case— had he said something?

Suddenly, he couldn’t remember.

The something moved, drawing slightly closer to him; it was a shadow against the otherwise white blur of the wall.

“Who?” he managed, his mouth feeling much too heavy to move properly.

The shadow made a quick movement, not any closer or further away, as though jumping from fright. He really wished it would just reveal itself to him.

After a long moment, it did, the shadow moved closer, coming into focus very quickly; it was Sinara, who looked vaguely horrified.

Nonetheless, she sounded calm when she spoke. “You’re all right.” It was more of a reassurance than a query; she didn’t wait for him to continue. “I can help you.”

_Why was she being like this?_

Sinara paused, near his legs, looking down at him in thinly-veiled terror. “You must have questions.”

“What? Sinara…” He knew he was stumbling over words and she was looking increasingly concerned. He didn’t know what to do to make her feel better.

“You know who I am?” She demanded.

“Yes? You’re Sinara.” _Right?_

“And where are we?”

“Hala,” Kasius replied immediately, but no more elegantly. He was beginning to realize that she was quizzing him to make sure he was mentally sound.

_How ridiculous, this from the woman with amnesia!_

Sinara’s shoulders relaxed suddenly, and for the briefest moment, he thought she was going to laugh. “Not that ridiculous, reduced blood flow to the brain causes damage.”

_Did I say that out loud?_

“Yes,” Sinara replied, her voice now undeniably tinged with tentative amusement.

This time, he focused on saying nothing.

Sinara seemed to be waiting for him to say something as well, but he still wasn’t entirely clear on what was going on, so they were at an impasse. He wanted to know what was going on but somehow couldn’t put the thought into a question.

Sinara looked very tired, which added up, she was not sleeping, standing up with all the lights on, in the middle of the night. She’d taken her makeup off, and her hair was falling out of the knot it was pinned in, in at least five different places.

“You’re pretty.” Kasius blurted out, the thought occurring to him.

Sinara blinked and drew her head back at the statement. She was quiet for a brief moment, then; “You were shot in the lung.”

_Oh, right._

“I forgot.” He replied, struggling to find a way to respond; he wasn’t too concerned, after all, he was alive, it didn’t hurt, and Sinara was right here, so whoever did it must already be dead. “Who did it?”

“Taryan didn’t tell me, and Majia wouldn’t let me help.”

Kasius supposed that was good; he remembered that he didn’t like the idea of Sinara fighting anymore.

“It’s being taken care of,” Sinara assured him. “They needed someone to sit with you while they did so.”

“Is it bad?” Kasius asked, referring to his injury, he’d briefly considered sitting up, but he felt so heavy…

“No. But I don’t think you can expect to get married this week.”

Kasius groaned vaguely, remembering that bit. “Didn’t even want to. Why, why do I have to do that?”

Sinara didn’t respond to his question. Instead, she moved towards the side of the bed, where, he noticed for the first time that a cart of medical supplies had been set up. She handed him a small vial of a dark, pink liquid. “Drink this; the sedative will wear off soon enough.”

He raised his head off the pillow as far as he could without lifting his shoulders too and raised the glass to his mouth, drinking it in one gulp. It was so bitter he nearly spat it out and certainly would have if his muscles were more responsive. Sinara handed him a glass of water and allowed him to take a small sip.

“You can’t have anything else until the sedative wears off.”

Kasius groaned, leaning his head back against the pillow— the medicine was making his throat burn. “When did you become a doctor?” He hadn’t meant to sound aggressive; it’s just that he couldn’t _not_ talk loudly.

“Something happened to me after you got shot. They wouldn’t let me fight.”

“You’re hurt?” He was being loud again, and he wanted to sit up, but he could only lift his arm and move it in vague circles.

“No, no.” Sinara put her hand on his forearm, holding it down. “It felt like it, but I’m fine.”

Was that supposed to make sense? There was something there, but Kasius couldn’t quite make the connection.

Sinara didn’t offer further details; she gave him a long, curious glance before turning away from him. She made her way to the edge of the room, stopping just before the window and gazing out over the city. His confused vision could barely distinguish between her dark clothing and the darkness beyond the window; he could only make out where her shirt ended and her neck began.

“Aren’t you tired?” he called, and she turned around; he found her shape in the movement, or, maybe she was standing a bit away from the window now, he wasn’t sure.

“Yes.” Sinara paced back into focus, checking the communicator on her wrist. “Your doctor will be here soon.”

“When?”

“In five hours.”

“Come, you can get some rest.”

Sinara perched on the edge of the mattress, giving him a disapproving look. “Someone needs to stay up with you.”

“I’ll stay up with me.”

“No. You won’t.”

Kasius laughed, surprising himself with how loud the sound was, Sinara’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and her head jerked upright.

“You got me there.” He said.

Sinara shook her head, about as amused as he’d ever seen her. Somehow his argument hadn’t convinced her, _how had that one failed?_

He raised his hand to his ribcage, feeling the ridges of the bandages beneath his shirt. “It’s uncomfortable,” he said, off Sinara’s curious look.

She leaned across the bed and propped herself one of her elbows. She pulled his shirt aside, revealing a thick, white bandage wrapped around his torso from the bottom of his ribcage to just below his shoulder. His movements had moved it slightly out of place causing the bottom of the bandage to curl in on itself. Sinara pulled it until it lay flat again, brushing her hand across the length of the bandage to make sure it would lay flat. Her hand paused in the middle of the action, and she stared down at her hand, brilliant blue against pure white, completely mystified. Her free hand covered the same spot on her own torso.

When she glanced up at him, he finally remembered what he’d been trying to piece together since she mentioned Majia not letting her fight. _She felt the gunshot too_.

_She must be confused._

Instinctively, he reached out and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her the rest of the way on the bed. Sinara made a faintly surprised noise but didn’t pull back, and furthermore, didn’t murder him on the spot.

“You’re all right?” he asked, his hand tracing over her back to cover the spot where the bullet had struck him. “It doesn’t hurt anymore?”

Sinara allowed her head to sink into the hollow between his neck and shoulder; exhaling emphatically and letting herself collapse into the mattress. “No, it doesn’t hurt.”

She was quite cold, and the sedative’s effects were still chilling him; he had to ask her to pull one of the blankets from the end of the bed for them. He was half afraid that she would get up and refuse to lie back down. But she settled back against him, her arm draped over his chest, her hand lightly gripping his upper arm. She wasn’t quite relaxed, an underlying tension never leaving her shoulders despite the constant motion of his hand across her back and through her hair as he absently tried to undo the knot Majia had twisted it into.

She was worried, and possibly the one-millionth time in his life he privately wished that there were telepathic connections between soulmates.

He turned his head to the side and pressed a light kiss to Sinara’s forehead. “I love you.”

Her response was mumbled, half-asleep, nonetheless unmistakably; “You too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S/out to Deke Shaw, for one (1) idea about waking up from surgery and literally nothing else. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> ~Cartwen


	13. Backpedalling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kasius is oblivious and Sinara has a headache, and these two things are not related.

**Kasius:**

Sun was streaming through the window, and Sinara was curled against him when he woke up. Her head on his right shoulder and her left arm wrapped around his torso, her fingers lightly curled around him just above his hip. She was awake and reading something off a tablet she held in her free hand. Her hair was slightly damp and cold against his neck.

It was the first time in the five days since the party fiasco that she’d been there when he woke up. His happiness quickly turned to concern as to why she hadn’t gotten up for training this morning.

He stirred and she glanced up at him, setting aside her reading. “Morning.” 

“No training today?” He asked, trying not to sound as though he were reprimanding her. She was so sensitive about such things since her return.

“It’s nine hundred hours, I’ve gone and come back.”

“That explains the hair.” He remarked absently, not sure if he should be endeared or concerned that she’d come back to bed. “Training went all right?”

Sinara nodded; she hadn’t turned away yet.

“And you’re feeling all right?” He prodded, of course, he’d be able to tell if she was hurt, but she was being unusual.

Sinara propped herself up on her elbow, shifting forward, so she was leaning mostly over him; her other hand sliding up his side and coming to rest on his right shoulder.

“Yes. Why?” She tilted her head, causing her hair to slide off her shoulder, forming a dark curtain between their faces and the right-hand side of the room.

“No reason.” Kasius managed, he was suddenly finding it a bit difficult to keep his breathing steady, his heart pounding in his chest with sudden intensity. He wondered if she could tell; she betrayed absolutely no sign that she could.

She just kept looking at him, her eyes uncommonly dark and somehow more intense than usual, reminiscent of… _I’m not thinking about that now_.

“And your lung?” she asked abruptly; she tilted her chin slightly upwards so that her face hovering over his.

It took him a while to process the question, and longer still to begin to formulate a coherent response.

She bit her lower lip, curling it inwards and narrowed her eyes, perhaps a query as to why he had failed to respond. Somehow, to his mind, the gesture came off as flirtatious.

“Fine.” He managed at long last; it was an honest, if not somewhat inadequate answer. He wanted to kiss her; she was so close, it would be easy, his hands on the back of her neck and her waist, pulling her against him. Her lips on his— among other things.

Of course, he did none of these things. Despite the declarations of love the morning after he was injured, he wasn’t quite sure where she wanted to go next. Sinara had never been forward in affection or communication; in nearly a decade at the Lighthouse, she’d initiated a kiss five times, seeming content to simply hope he’d guess what she wanted. But he was loathe to let something slip, and make her feel guilty; so he would wait for as long as it took for the one in three thousand days ever to come if it ever did.

Sinara moved her hand from his shoulder to his forehead, brow wrinkling in concern, but he caught the hand gently and pulled it down, holding it against his shoulder.

“You worry too much, Sinara.” He said. “I feel perfectly well.”

She threw him a skeptical look, knowing just as well that he was acting strangely.

“However, that of course, means the wedding is back on.” He said, it wasn’t a lie, but the wedding couldn’t be farther from his mind at the moment.

It had been the wrong thing to say, perhaps; his words shattered the early-morning universe that seemed to contain only them. The difference was palpable in the sudden tension in Sinara’s body and the disappearing of something in her eyes. She pulled away from him and moved towards the edge of the bed, murmuring something slightly nonsensical about going to find breakfast.

Kasius hastened to follow her out of the room, pausing only to don a robe over his sleeping clothes. He doubted Sinara was truly angry with him, but he shouldn’t have mentioned it. The thought didn’t bother him in the slightest, neither he or Majia had any high expectations for their marriage, but Sinara made in abundantly clear that she was quite bothered by the idea. She’d get used to it; after all, she said she loved him, and that didn’t mean nothing.

Sinara was in the sitting room, examining one of the plants lining the wall, with a neutral expression, which wasn’t saying much because her so-called neutral expression was nearly as terrifying as her glare.

He moved to the table and busied himself with pouring water into a glass as he waited for her to join him. She did, almost immediately, but despite her talk of being hungry, made no move to eat anything.

He looked up at her and opened his mouth, trying to decide what would be the best thing to say to her at that moment, what he could possibly say to comfort her.

“Who are the Praxians?” she asked before he could say anything.

He was surprised by the question, and it must have shown on his face.

“I was reading the reports your father sent over this morning.” She said simply. “The assassin was Praxian.”

That was entirely unsurprising, given the troubles they’d been having recently with Contraxia and the failed spy mission. He told her so.

Sinara nodded. “I don’t remember them.”

“Praxians are from the planet Praxius Four; it’s a planet in a small system beyond Large Magellanic Cloud. They’ve been experiencing an ice age the past ten centuries, so ice has become their main export. It was a battle between them, their allies from the planet Gramos and us that got us sent to the Lighthouse.”

Sinara nodded. “They must be strong, to have resisted your father’s armies for so long.” She paused a moment before adding. “Why do you want an ice planet?”

“The Praxians are the most technologically advanced civilization in the known galaxy, their scientific capabilities are decades beyond our own, and our technology outstrips every other known planet.”

Sinara nodded again. “Which is how the assassin went unnoticed, your father’s reports were inconclusive.”

Kasius hadn’t cared to read the reports, but it seemed exceedingly likely. “I don’t believe there’s anything the Praxians can’t do with their technology, they can cure anything, even death, or so I’ve heard tell.”

Sinara looked quite uncomfortable at that thought; it occurred to him that bringing up death-cures was somewhat insensitive.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

Sinara gestured dismissively, and he fell silent. “And it’s never occurred to anyone that fighting a race that doesn’t fear death might end badly.”

“It occurred to us,” Kasius said. “And we were locked away on a destroyed planet for it.”

Sinara nodded and was quiet for a very long moment, turning her attention to the things on the table in front of her, still eating none of it. He watched her, barely bothering to conceal the fact that he was staring; her behavior was quite concerning. She was radiating tension, her shoulders drawn up slightly, her jaw clenched tightly, and her hands were pressing so forcefully against the tabletop that the skin of her fingers was tinted white.

“Sinara,” he began, putting a hand on her upper back and moving his thumb in slow, comforting circles.

“Majia told me about your soulmate,” Sinara said, sitting backward in her chair, so he was forced to pull his hand away. “Do you believe that?”

It was the last thing in the world he expected her to come out with. He was stunned into complete silence for a few moments, as he tried to find a way to put it out of Sinara’s mind.

“That she told you? Yes, she’s the worst.” He said finally.

“You believe it’s true? The whole idea?” She clarified but didn’t pause to allow him to respond before continuing. “Majia told me that she died, your soulmate, I’m sorry, that must be difficult.”

Kasius was completely lost on how to respond, and vaguely shocked at how much Sinara was saying.

Sinara opened her mouth as though preparing to launch into another statement.

“When, when did Majia say all this?” He interrupted.

“After you were hurt, when you were with the doctors.” Sinara seemed irritated by the interruption, so he didn’t ask his next question which would have been _what the hell did she say to you?_

“I don’t think you have the right of it.” Sinara continued. “It felt like I got shot, I couldn’t breathe or move.”

“I know. You must be confused, Sinara, I am so—”

She continued talking over him; she refused to meet his eyes still staring intensely at the table. “I don’t think your soulmate is dead. I think it’s me.”

Kasius froze, incredibly confused for a moment, before understanding what she was saying. She didn’t think that he realized. Somewhere between amused and oh-so-relieved, he chuckled at the thought.

And instantly realized that it was probably the wrong response; Sinara glared at him.

“Don’t. I know how outlandish it sounds, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“It’s not outlandish. To be fair, when I first told Majia about you, I thought you were dead.” He slid along the bench, moving closer to Sinara.

She finally looked up at him, seeming confused again. “You could have just told me.”

He leaned against the tabletop with one hand and raised the other to Sinara’s cheek, tracing his thumb across the old scar slashed across her cheek. “I didn’t want you to feel as though you had to do anything. Besides, had this,” he gestured to his injured ribs. “Never happened, you would have laughed at the mere suggestion. Don’t deny me that.”

She didn’t.

“Majia is an idiot,” She paused tantalizingly, as though for effect and leaned into his touch. The tip of her nose nearly brushed against his; his breath hitched slightly. Her eyes taking on the dark, daring, glint from earlier as they held his gaze. Her breathing was more shallow and hurried, as his undoubtedly was as well. The faint sound of the inhales and exhales seeming to embody the tension hanging between them. Hell, he wanted to kiss her.

“She shouldn’t be an empress,” Sinara said, her voice was quiet but deliberate, and aggressive.

“Forget Majia.” He murmured, tilting his head to the side and pressing his lips to hers, his words were clumsy and halfway incomprehensible as they got lost in the gesture.

Sinara leaned into the kiss, one of her hands wrapping around the base of his neck, the other flat against his chest. His own free arm snaked around her waist, pulling her ever closer until her torso was flush against his. Her lips were cold— she was always cold, and they moved hesitantly over his at first, she pushed her chin outwards, towards him, pushing him backward, deepening the kiss.

But, she drew her chin back somewhat suddenly, leaning her forehead against his, her lips parting slightly as she drew in several rapid, unsteady breaths. He opened his eyes; she was looking at her hand on his chest, she must be able to feel the frantic pounding of his heart. She looked back at him, a strange, indescribable look in her eyes. He thought he must be smiling like an idiot himself; he’d like to believe the indescribable look was her version of this.

“Sinara.” He began, struggling to find words, or even the breath to fuel more talking.

“I can’t.” Sinara sighed, sounding almost disappointed in herself. “I can’t forget it.”

He was still a little lost in the euphoria of the kiss, “Majia doesn’t care what I do, I don’t care what she does."

“What if I care?” Sinara asked, pulling away from him, her voice losing its softness altogether.

“I love _you_. Majia is just political.”

“You’ll have sex with her; your children will be hers, your family will be hers.”

“Yes, but—”

Sinara paused and pressed a hand over her eyes, screwing up her face as though in pain. After a moment, she exhaled emphatically and stood, backing away from him.

“I won’t be your scandalous secret for the rest of my life.” She said bitterly, her voice sounding strained. She wasn’t walking steadily, either, swaying slightly and very clearly trying not to. 

Kasius stood, not wanting to stand too close, but beginning to worry that there was something wrong.

“It’s not,” she paused, wrinkling her brow again and holding her forehead. “That’s not fair.”

He barely made it across the room to her before her eyes rolled back and she collapsed to the ground.

**Sinara:**

_The Lighthouse was cold and dirty, and enormous. The humans occupied the bottom-most levels, where it was warmer; but their predecessors had settled on the forty-sixth level much closer to the surface. Despite having an established settlement for nearly forty years; the Kree Watch at the Lighthouse had failed to build more than the barest of necessities for life on level forty-six. Each floor seemed to be a convoluted series of hallways and rooms centered around a central room. On level forty-six, the central room was a base of operations for the Kree Watch, and the corridors surrounding the room were lined with bunk pods, a canteen, a bathroom, and a series of large rooms littered with supply boxes and scrap metal that seemed to serve as gathering places for the Watchmen._

_Kasius was horrified; pacing the stretch of hallway in front of her bunk pod, wringing his hands, and gripping his head in frustration._

_The other members of the Watch had long since retired to their pods, and her own eyes burned with fatigue. Her leg had been injured in a squabble with the humans; it was a simple dislocated knee— easy enough to fix, but it was the last of a long string of small injuries on too little sleep._

_“I don’t know what we’re going to do, Sinara,” Kasius said, repeating the same thought he’d been saying in a few different ways, for the dozenth time._

_She stayed quiet, watching him pass her a few more times getting progressively more agitated with each turn._

_“Damn it!” Kasius shouted abruptly, slamming his hand against the wall, just above the doorway to Sinara’s pod. The blow rang through the sheet metal all the way down the hallway, being inside the wall, in her bunk made the sound deafening._

_She resisted wincing at the sound, distracted by a sear pain across her palm. This time, she did wince and gasped before she could stop herself. She brought the afflicted hand in front of her face, immediately assuming that someone had dropped a knife in her bunk. Her hand was uninjured but continued to sting like a cut exposed in cold air._

_Kasius had fallen silent and still, standing by the entrance of her bunk. She glanced over at him, considering if she should lodge a complaint about her hand with him. Kasius was already looking at her, his anger replaced by something that might have been awe; he was clutching one of his hands with the other, dark blood seeping between his fingers._

_Oh._ Oh.

_Kasius didn’t say anything as he sat on the bunk alongside her injured, outstretched leg, much closer than he ordinarily would. “I was right.” He said finally, reaching for the hand she was holding up to inspect, taking it with both of his blood-slicked ones._

_Unthinking, she placed her free hand over his, used it to pull herself into a sitting position and pressed her lips against his forcefully._

_Kasius wasn’t as surprised as she had found some part of herself hoping he might be, raising a hand to the nape of her neck, pulling her closer and leaning into her. His hand was bleeding all over her neck, and it was getting in her hair, plastering small strands to the back of her neck— she noticed this absently, passively, not quite caring one way or another. The majority of her attention on the feeling of his lips moving across hers, smooth and warm, and the quiet, enticing gasps he took between movements._

_He was pressing her backward, he pulled his other hand away from hers and braced it on the mattress beside her. She brought her hands his face, dragging him the rest of the way down as she settled against her pillow, his blood on her hand, smearing across his face, marring the immaculately set white powder on his cheeks. The arm he was using to brace himself against the mattress wrapped around her waist, pulling her over him as he rolled onto his back, bringing his legs the rest of the way onto the mattress. Her stomach swooped slightly at the movement, the pressure settling low between her hips._

_Her hands traced down his neck, fiddling with the collar of his uniform jacket, beginning to undo the buttons; she was fumbling slightly, unable to see what she was doing with unsteady hands, something that certainly wasn’t helped by the distraction of Kasius’s hand traveling further down her torso._

_“Wait.” She murmured against his lips, his hand pausing on the waistband of her uniform pants._

_She reached out and pulled the door down, sealing the pod to the rest of the hallway._

_She turned back to Kasius, her nose bumping against his with the movement._

_Kasius smiled, almost laughing at the hiccup, and brushed his lips across hers gently. “Where were we?”_

Sinara sat bolt upright, her eyes snapping open, somehow completely out of breath. Her head was pounding with a dull, but overpowering pain, emanating from a point behind her eyes. Beyond that, her thoughts were buzzing in confusion at the dream? The vision? No, the memory. She didn’t know how she knew what it was on so little context, but she knew, with absolute, unquestionable certainty that it was one. A singular moment from her past that somehow crept back into her conscious mind.

_What the hell?_

She looked about; she knew where she was, Kasius’ room, lying on top of crumpled sheets and blankets. The room was deserted and outside the room was bright; sunlight wasn’t streaming into the room but shining down on the city from behind the palace. It must be mid-afternoon.

_I’m getting damn sick of waking up like this._

She remembered being in the sitting room, she and Kasius were on the verge of an argument. Her head had been bothering her since she and Kasius had gotten up for breakfast, and it was still hurting. She remembered the confession, the kiss, being angry about Majia, and the pain behind her eyes intensifying.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, ready to press on with the day. Perhaps Kasius would have something to say about what had happened, or about Majia, until such a time, she refused to give either enough space in her brain to hurt her.

She made it precisely three steps towards the door before an explosion shook the building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a new writing/AoS Tumblr-> sinara-smith.tumblr.com, come say hi!  
> Thanks for reading!  
> ~Cartwen


	14. The Spy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a lot of things happen in a short amount of time.

**Sinara:**

Sinara froze in her tracks, instinctively ducking covering her head with both her arms, guarding against debris, but only a bit dust drifted down from the high, arched ceiling. 

“Ka—”

A buzzing, whistling sound interrupted her; she turned towards the window in horror just in time to see two explosives from some unseen craft above dive towards the city. They erupted into flames, decimating a row of buildings. The crashing sound came moments after impact; the glass window shattered from the force of the explosions. 

Air-raid sirens began ringing out across the city, emergency lights blinking across the rooftops in the city. The commotion on the place grounds below was deafening, even six stories up. 

She had to get out of here. Sinara held out her right hand, her first instinct being to summon the orbs to her.  She had to get Kasius out of here. _Where the hell was he?_

She hurried out of the room; he wasn’t in the lounge. She doubled back and checked the rest of the rooms, cold and heavy fear began to settle in her chest with each empty room she came across. He wasn’t still in his living quarters, _where had he gone? How long had she been unconscious?_

She checked the communicator strapped to her wrist, her most recent communication with him was last night: his dinner order. 

“Damn it.” She muttered. She started towards the door. Moving was difficult— perhaps, if she were someone else, she would be paralyzed with fear. Instead, She could feel her heartbeat through her whole body, and her throat was uncomfortably tight. Something was wrong; he wouldn’t have left her— if he had, she would kill him when she found him. But he wouldn’t have if only because he couldn’t fight for himself, something had happened, something horrible.

The sixth-floor corridor was deserted and waiting for the lift nearly felt worse than being tortured by the Praxians. She rechecked her communicator as she did, logically knowing there would be no news, but hoping there would be. Finally, the doors slid open, and she stepped inside; she felt sick with fear, or anger, or some strange combination of the two and the swooping downward movement was not helping.

She checked her communicator once more before the doors opened. 

The ground floor corridor was teeming with soldiers, running off in every direction, generals shouting orders and information that she couldn’t decipher through all the noise. 

One of the guards caught her arm as she strode off the elevator, she recognized him from training, Vargas, she thought.

Childishly, she hoped he couldn’t feel her trembling under his hand, 

“Scrappy.” He said by way of greeting.

Allegedly, that was a childhood nickname of hers, not that she would know either way. 

“Better to call her ‘Ghost’ now.” Another soldier, whose name she certainly didn’t know, scoffed. 

She twisted her arm away from Vargas. “Have you seen Kasius?” 

Vargas just laughed at that, her blood boiled, and she grabbed the collar of his shirt, slamming him against the wall.

Several of the soldiers around them turned towards the exchange looking vaguely amused. 

“Tell me.” 

“Some guard you are, not knowing emergency protocol, seems our dearly beloved prince wasn’t thinking with his head when he hired you. Look how you’re trembling now, are you scared for him, or the battle to come? It’s understandable, at the Lighthouse you never had to deal with bombs or battle, just little Terrans.”

“You want to die?” she sneered, twirling the fingers of her free hand, compelling the orbs to dart about in front of Vargas’ face. “I’m not afraid to kill you, and who would notice? We’re under attack.” 

“There’s a bunker under the Security Council’s meeting room.” 

Sinara turned around, another soldier, one of the onlookers was speaking to her. 

“They’ll be in there.” The soldier continued. 

Sinara let Vargas go, he stumbled away from the wall, looking quite terrified.

She nodded to the soldier who helped her; he winked at her. 

“Remember that I helped you when all this is over, huh, beautiful?” He called after her. 

Sinara suddenly wasn’t feeling quite so grateful. “That’s repulsive.” 

She pushed through the crowd of soldiers until the hallway cleared, deeper into the palace, determinedly ignoring her thundering heartbeat. No one tried to stop her; perhaps they didn’t want a ghost on their mission, maybe they were terrified, she hoped it was the latter. 

The Security Council meeting room was in the East Wing of the palace, far from the living quarters on the opposite side of the grounds. She hurried through the long, central hallway of the living quarters, passing countless function rooms, bedrooms, dining areas, libraries, she absently wondered how many of these things Taryan used and needed. 

Another round of explosions seemed to shake the very air around her, the deafening, horrifying noise of the city collapsing below them. It didn’t occur to her to worry about that; her attention focused only on finding getting to the security council room and finding Kasius. The singular focus was somewhat steadying, a thing to focus on over the blood pounding in her ears and the sort-of sick feeling in her stomach. All she had to do was get to the room, and everything would be fine. If she found Kasius, everything would be fine. 

She refused to let herself contemplate a universe where he wasn't in that bunker. 

Her head was pounding, more and more painful with every step she took down the hallway, the point behind the bridge of her nose radiating pains across the interior of her skull. The light in the hallway hurt to look at.  

_Doesn’t matter._ Sinara told herself— more bombs were falling, the screams from the city were loud enough to hear, the sounds of fighting beyond the palace walls were loud enough to hear deep within the palace as she was.

The Security Council room was familiar to her; the large circular wooden table, surrounded with eighteen chairs, one for each representative of the fifteen commonwealths on Hala, Rastak, Taryan, and Kasius. She’d spent a few afternoons standing behind Kasius’s chair, listening to the others drone on and on about issues facing the empire. 

Now, the room was dark, empty, and dead silent; the room sealed so tightly the explosives raining down on the city were mild tremors in the floor. She was standing alone, behind Taryan’s chair, staring at the room’s control panel in utter bewilderment. One of the options she selected projected a hologram map over the table, the second just turned on the lights. She supposed a button for a secret bunker couldn’t very well be labeled but,  it took her six tries before there was a faint whirring sound and a panel shifted aside from the wall, in the darkest corner of the room. This revealed a staircase that led deep, deep underground. Down this far, it was impossible to hear anything but her ragged breathing.

At the end of the staircase there was a heavy, reinforced metal door. To enter, she had to use a control panel that performed a retinal scan and scanned her communicator to confirm her identity. Her hands had begun to shake so badly that it took her three times for the scanner to read her communicator around the movement. 

With her identity confirmed, she heard the _click, click, click_  of a series of locks undoing themselves and the door slide open with a mighty, metallic groan. 

Majia was waiting right in front of the door when it opened. “Sinara!” she sounded delighted to see her. 

Sinara glowered back, trying to edge around her into the bunker.

“I’m glad to see you.” Majia continued, blocking her pathway into the room. “Kasius has been bitching at his guards for leaving you behind for two hours.” 

“Then I’m sure he’ll be interested to see me. Move,” Sinara snapped, pushing past Majia into the room. 

She froze two steps into the room at the sight. 

Kasius, Rastak, and Taryan were all backed against a wall— more specifically three different walls. Among the only furnishings in the room, there was a simple table and chairs, and a communication system was set up against the wall. The communications system was smoking and sparking, and longer functional. 

And there were five dead bodies on the floor. 

The three security advisors from Hala’s most powerful commonwealths, and Taryan’s guards lay dead on the floor, bleeding heavily from their ears and open eyes. 

“Will you shut up now?” Majia demanded, drawing Sinara’s attention back to her, she was speaking to Kasius, who oddly, had yet to move away from the wall. Majia shut and locked the door to the bunker before returning to Sinara’s side. 

Kasius jerked his head and shoulders away from the wall, only to be slammed backward by some invisible force. “Majia, leave her alone.” 

“Listen here, girl.” Rastak began. “I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.” 

Sinara whipped her head towards him quickly, then to Majia who narrowed her eyes at Rastak. 

“Another arrangement? Please, Rastak, I know what happens if I let you out of here.” Majia didn’t sound scared; in fact, she almost sounded as though she were laughing. 

Sinara didn’t quite understand what was going on, but she understood enough. She opened her palm, compelling the orbs to circle above it, gaining momentum before—  The orbs flew from her hand towards Majia, but instead of hitting her, they soared over Majia’s shoulder and landed in her outstretched palm.

“You won’t be needing these.” Majia said coolly, depositing her orbs in the pocket of her robe. 

Fear clenched in Sinara’s stomach, she’d been too hurried leaving their quarters to bring any other weapons. She shoved the fear aside, now was no time for such foolishness. 

 Majia turned back to Rastak. “You’ll kill the rest of my people for their defiance.” 

“An arrangement would indic—” 

“I think you’ve taken enough.” Majia interrupted, squeezing her free hand into a fist. 

Rastak slumped forward, blood dripping from his ears, still held against the wall by whatever invisible bonds were keeping him there, dead.   

**Kasius:**

As soon as Sinara walked into the room, his heart slowed the furious tempo it had kept up since the attack began. For all the oddities he experienced at the Lighthouse, today had to be the strangest day of his life.

Relief had washed through him, if Sinara was here, so Majia posed no genuine threat to them.

But the relief didn't last long.

Sinara launched herself at Majia knocking her to the ground. She pinned Majia down, kneeling on Majia's thighs and pressing her forearm against Majia’s throat. 

Sinara raised her free hand, uncurling her fingers in the gesture that would summon the orbs to her. But, before they could reach her, Sinara was thrown into the air.

Majia seemed to accomplish it easily, with a single glance.

Sinara flew off Majia, through the air until she hit the wall and fell to the floor, slumped over.

Panic surged through him, gripping like a vice in his stomach, _was there nothing to be done against Majia? Furthermore, what was even happening?_  

“Sinara!”

He tried to pull himself from the wall, foiled again by the restraints he couldn’t see. He was slammed back against the wall, knocking some of the air from his lungs. 

Sinara looked up at him, then at Majia her expression changing from pained to downright furious. She climbed to her feet hurriedly; Majia let her, looking only mildly amused; she was confident enough in whatever superpower, or technology she was using. Not even Sinara threatened her. She continued, watching passively as Sinara crossed the room to him.  

“Are you hurt?” Sinara asked, not looking at him, but instead around him, trying to find whatever was holding him to the wall. She was steady and precise in her movements, despite the fainting and the being tossed around, and whatever she’d gone through to find him. 

He could feel his breathing slowed, his mind felt slightly clearer, he was beginning to put some of the pieces together, Sinara’s presence and proximity calming him.  

“No more than I was, are you all right?” He replied.

She nodded, distractedly; she was running her hands along his shoulders and arms, presumably in an attempt to free him.

Finding nothing, she made her report; “The invisible bonds, like the ones on Contraxia, I told you about them. What’s going on?” 

Kasius wasn’t entirely sure he understood that himself. “The damn Praxians, they decided to go on the offensive.”

He’d missed a few developments in the case after his injury, threats, and arguments between the planetary leaders and such, but the Security Council had seemed entirely caught off guard when he met with them this morning.

Sinara nodded, eyes cast downwards, then, meeting his with sudden urgency. “Majia is using their technology.” 

“So I am,” Majia commented, raising her voice more than entirely necessary. “Such a clever little spy.” 

“What do you want?” Sinara asked, tension running through her voice and all of her muscles. Not giving him a moment to consider Majia’s words, she turned, standing almost entirely in front of him. 

“Nothing from you,” Majia sneered. “Don’t be that way, Sinara, no harm will come to my fiancé either.” 

Sinara bristled. “The city is under attack. There’s no time for this.”

Taryan scoffed, drawing their attention back to him. “Is this indigent is the only competent warrior in my employ?"

“More than you.” Majia sneered.

Sinara turned to him for an explanation, Kasius had to confess, he had none for her.

“What is the meaning of all this, my dear?” Taryan asked, his voice taking on a sweeter note, a new approach.

“You, paying for what you did,” Majia replied. “You’ll sacrifice anything and anyone, and for what, a string of lost battles and dead soldiers? My brothers died in the same foolish campaign you exiled your son for abandoning, the love of my life died in one of your campaigns.”

Kasius exchanged another confused look with Sinara, her hand closed over his wrist as though in reassurance.

“The Praxians are tired of heavy losses, as are some of your people in Qol. Millions of lives lost to your pride. But we can make you suffer these losses too, and will. You’re going to die today, Taryan, and you can die knowing that this is the end of your empire.”

Taryan let out a sharp laugh.

Majia stretched out her hand, forming it into the loose fist. Taryan’s laughter turned to guttural choking.

Sinara’s hand tightened around his wrist, yet she made no move to stop Majia. He wasn’t inclined to ask her to either.

Taryan asked for no help, not even a gaze of desperation, instead, holding Majia’s gaze. He coughed and spluttered; dark blue blood bubbling from his mouth and running down his chin and neck.

Majia tightened her fist, and he slumped against his restraints.

Kasius stared at the body. He felt nothing, not grief, or fear, or even relief at being free of Taryan. He didn’t even feel guilty for not having stopped it or shocked at how it had come to pass. The question on his mind wasn’t about Majia’s story, or what came next, but, how was she doing that? It was a strange sort of detachment, as though Taryan were merely one of the Lighthouse’s inhabitants, a death entirely inconsequential in the universe.

When he finally looked away from his father’s corpse, Sinara was staring back at him. She was not sad, or horrified, or angry, or frightening, just mildly curious, as if to say _now what?_

“How are you doing that?” Kasius blurted, instantly feeling a fool for doing so.

Majia laughed and tapped the base of her neck. “Praxian implant. I can make things go where I want them to. How’s your lung feeling, dear? I am sorry about that, but we need to distract the Security Council somehow to prepare the attack.”

Kasius felt himself blink in surprise, the apology echoing through his head, somehow not sinking in.

“You ordered the attack?” Sinara demanded, her voice was quiet but filled with ice and fury and disbelief.

He figured she must be shocked, the Sinara he knew wouldn’t ask such questions. She let go of his wrist, starting towards Majia, who promptly stopped her in her tracks, using the implant to immobilize her.

“Sinara, stop, I already told you I’m no danger to him.”

Sinara’s shoulders were shaking, straining against Majia’s grasp on her. “Let me go.”

“Very well,” Majia released her hold on Sinara, allowing her to stumble forward slightly.

For her part, Sinara stepped to the side, standing between himself and Majia, facing both of them.

“Now, where were we?” Majia asked her tone suggesting that she already knew the answer. “Oh, right, Kasius, call off your armies, please.” Her voice was sickly sweet, and her expression morphed into a brilliant smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes.

“Majia, you understand, I can’t do that. Hala wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“I’m not saying to give up Hala, just let the Praxians exact their revenge, you know your father deserved that. Then we can start fresh with them; this was their condition for a more productive alliance. The empire we rule together can be different.”

“Then we shall demand new terms. The dealings of my father were not my mistakes, what sort of ruler would it make me accept this punishment?” Kasius snapped, Majia’s plan was nonsense. Allowing the deaths of millions of citizens was no way to keep their population happy, or their empire strong.

Sinara looked at him, waiting for his word, he shook his head. _Not yet._  

“You two are sweet,” Majia noted, sounding bored. “I don’t know why you’re so concerned, Kasius, she can’t even stay mad at you.”

Sinara rolled her eyes, disagreeing with that point.

“He’s considering it, Sinara, I know he would leave, screw up everyone’s plans, abandon me, rather than lose you.” Majia turned back to him. “He just loves you so much.”

A strange sense of disquiet settled over him, something in Majia’s tone sounded threatening. But he couldn't pin point what would come next. 

He glanced towards Sinara, who seemed to sense it too, she wasn’t distracted by what Majia was saying. Instead, she carefully observed Majia for any sign of danger.

“I don’t think there’s anything he wouldn’t give up for you, should we find out, Spy?”

_What exactly did Majia think was going on?_ It was the second time she’d used the term in reference to Sinara.

He looked to Sinara for her reaction.

Sinara tensed, her shoulders drawing upwards and her head bowing to her chest. Her eyes squeezed shut for a moment before she opened them, her head snapping upwards. Her eyes were blown wide, and met his with an intense, almost panicked stare.

“Kasius.” It sounded like a question, or a plea.

Her knees sagged and buckled underneath her and she fell to the ground, her head falling into her hands. As she did back in his quarters, she was clutching her forehead as though in pain.

He spared Majia a panicked glance, but she watched Sinara with passive interest.

He had to get away from the wall. He couldn’t.

"Sinara!"

Sinara gasped in pain, seeming to curl further in on herself. He couldn’t feel it, _why couldn’t he feel it?_

“What are you doing?” He demanded. “Majia, stop it!”

She wasn’t making any of the hand motions that seemed to have been required in killing the guards, the Council members. The only gesture out of the ordinary she was making was the finger placed on the screen of her communicator.

“Majia, what are you doing?” He repeated.

“Haven’t you ever wondered how Sinara came back to you?” Majia asked completely calmly.

Kasius remained silent, sickening dread beginning to form in his stomach. Of course, he had, but he supposed it never seemed like the pressing issue.

It wasn't even the pressing issue now; he had to get to her.

“You undoubtedly know what the Praxians can do about death so that you can thank them,” Majia commented. “Or not, it didn’t come free. The plan was for you to find her after she left the Lighthouse, and we captured her. Couldn’t have the procedure traced back to us at the time. Alas, she escaped, but we knew it was only a matter of time until she did find you. We were right, she found you, and you, you took her right under your wing.”

Kasius glanced down at Sinara, who was squinting up at Majia, her expression was indiscernible, she was in a great deal of pain. He had the most horrible, nauseating feel that what Majia was describing was somehow impermanent, that this was how he would lose her again. 

"Let me go." Kasius snapped. "There's no time for this. Sinara is-"

Majia ignored him and continued. “We’ve been planning something of this sort, I had an in as Faulnak’s fiancé but when SHIELD arrived on the Lighthouse. Things were going another way. You left, we had access to Sinara and thus the resources to create the perfect spy.”

“What did you do?” His voice was undeniably shaking now. 

“A Praxian implant, undetectable on Kree brain scanners. We see what she sees, hear what she hears, and know where she goes; and she never leaves your side. Any state secret she knew, we knew as well. It blocks her memories, we couldn’t have her too aware, or she may have guessed. We just needed to get her back to you. Fortunately, she was capable of doing it herself.”

Kasius could barely believe what he was hearing. All this time, and neither of them the wiser.

Sinara was crying, awful, breathless sobs. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her cry. 

"Majia, stop." He said, his voice quiet and restrained by his panic.

"It’s painful when it malfunctions.” Majia remarked and held out the wrist with her communicator on it. ‘’So paralyzing to the brain that you probably can’t even feel it. But I can do this whenever I want.”

Majia pressed a button on her communicator and Sinara screamed, well beyond her comparatively quiet gasps and sobs of pain; his blood ran cold at the sound.

She’d be angry at him for giving in to Majia’s demands.

But he had no choice in the matter. Majia was right; he couldn’t see her suffer, the price didn’t matter.

“Stop it! Enough! Stop it!” He ordered. “Let’s negotiate.”

Majia sighed and switched off whatever she was using to hurt Sinara. Then she turned to him and pressed another button on her communicator.

He looked down at his torso, watching small bolts of light flicker and slide off of him. When they had disappeared, he was free to move away from the wall.

Any thoughts on a negotiation he had, ran from his mind, he flew to Sinara’s side and knelt on the ground beside her. He pulled her against him, her head rested against his right shoulder, her back leaning on his chest; sending spikes of pain through his injured chest.

Her breathing was rapid and shallow, but she was conscious and seemed otherwise unharmed.

He brushed his hand across her cheek, wiping a few tears from her cheeks.

“You’re an idiot.” Sinara muttered. “I could have handled it.”

“Oh, yes?” Kasius replied, his voice cracking slightly with relief. “Well, you know I couldn’t have.”

Majia cleared her throat. “Hey, lovebirds, I was promised a negotiation.”

Kasius glanced up at her, a plan beginning to form in his mind. “If you can get the implant out, or give me your word, I’ll do whatever you want.”

Sinara’s hand tightened in his, and she gave him a horrified look. He stared back, willing her to understand what he meant. Her grip loosened slightly; _she did._

Majia nodded approvingly, a smile returning to her face, moving towards Sinara and kneeling beside her. “Sinara, this will be very painful.”

“You’re doing it, right now?” Kasius demanded. It seemed quite unsanitary at the least to do it here.

“I can control it with my communicator, it will come out quite easily, albeit without anaesthesia—”

“Just do it.” Sinara snapped.

Majia raised her eyebrows, challenging Kasius to intervene.

When he didn’t, she carefully aligned her wrist communicator with the middle of Sinara’s head and adjusted a few of the controls.

Sinara stiffened, her grip on Kasius’s hand tightening tenfold.

“Make sure she doesn’t move her head, that will mess with the magnets.”

“The what?” Kasius demanded, nevertheless, doing what she said. He used his free hand to hold Sinara's head steady against his neck. Her breathing was shallow and loud directly in his ear, every exhale was sharp, and forced, and her grasp on his hand grew stronger every minute.

Sinara kept trying to move her head, threatening to jerk out of his grasp.

“It’s all right.” He reassured, sure he was saying it over and over, but too worried to bother making all that much sense.

“Shut the hell up.” Sinara snapped, raising her voice in anger, or pain, or both.

He obeyed, turning his attention to Majia, who continued to look unconcernedly at her communicator.

Then she held out her hand, just below Sinara’s ear, viscous, gold metal poured out into her hand, quickly reforming itself into what appeared to be a solid, computer chip.

Kasius was reminded of the silencers he’d used at the Lighthouse, how extraordinary that it was able to shape itself in such a way.

Sinara instantly relaxed against him, eyes fluttering shut and breathing slowing down. Another wave of fear surged through him, and he turned to Majia, preparing to demand an explanation.

But, Sinara stirred, lifting her head halfway off his chest, her eyes opening and shutting a few times, as though adjusting to the light. She looked strange, as though she’d been asleep for hours, rather than moments.

“Kasius.” She began, she sounded different, perhaps a little confused, or just tired.

She sat up and turned around to look at him properly. Her eyes were wide and glinted with something that might have been wonder.

“We were fighting. At the Lighthouse. We were fighting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	15. Showdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kasius has a revelation and Sinara kicks ass.

**Sinara:**

The memories didn’t come back in a flood; her life didn’t flash before her eyes. Instead, it just felt like a door opening in her mind. The memories hadn’t gone anywhere; they’d just been locked away, one might say. She didn’t need to take stock of everything she knew; it was enough to know that they were there now. Her understanding of how she’d gotten here was instantly much clearer:

The fight had started over Elena Rodriguez, Kasius’s so-called seer.

She had rarely been truly terrified, but whatever Rodriguez said came true; from uprisings in the Lighthouse to struggles they had with other galactic powers. Rodriguez’s ability to correctly guess every time didn’t bode well for the later parts of her prophecy; Kasius, dead, the Lighthouse, lost, _her, dead._

Yet, Kasius never failed to act in accordance with what Rodriguez told him. Any small act of defiance might have interrupted whatever time phenomenon it was, and yet he refused.

Kasius had insisted it was what he had to do to ensure their future, that he would break it after the Destroyer arrived, win back Taryan’s affection and save them both.

Their disagreements began over a year before SHIELD arrived at the Lighthouse, and their arrival had made things far worse. Kasius had taunted her with the time-traveler, Simmons, and ordered the fight to the death, and everything that happened with Faulnak. And he had steered them right to her death, knowing full well what the risk was.

But, he was here, never having died himself, so he must have broken the pattern. Seemingly, all it had taken her dying… _that bastard._

And yet, here she was; alive, courtesy of the Praxians who were trying to kill her again. She found it difficult to stay too angry with Kasius; it wasn’t that he didn’t care, he was just ambitious and stupid.

Their arms and legs were tangled together, and he was looking at her in concern, as soon as she looked up, he began talking.

“You remember. You were right all along Sinara. When my father asked me to return after Faulnak’s death, I obeyed, I was able to stop the last of my seer’s prophecy from occurring.”

_“I died.”_

Kasius hesitated, it occurred to Sinara that they never really talked about what happened; she’d only known that she was impaled on a pipe in a fight with the Destroyer of Worlds. Not where, not why, or when it had happened.

“I thought we had more time.” He said. “By all accounts, my seer said you died in the Lighthouse, fighting the Destroyer. Sinara, you know this. I thought, once you caught her on the surface, she would never have the chance.”

It only made it marginally better.

“I love you; above all else, I would never.”

She knew him to be sincere. She believed him, more than anything, more than her doubts and their disagreements. They’d had their schemes for their lives together and their disputes over those schemes; because she adored him, and he, her.

“I love you too, but—” _She had died as a result._

“While I am loath to break this up, there is a battle going on,” Majia said. “And I’d rather like to win it.”

Sinara was quite surprised to find her still there; she’d forgotten all else between their conversation and considering the circumstances of her death. She turned back to Kasius, the question in her gaze; _what now?_

His eyes widened, darting quickly to his left, skimming over the dead bodies of Taryan’s guards, then snapped back to looking at Majia.

“Are you all right to move?” He asked.

When she nodded, he looped an arm around her waist, pulling her up as she stood. Her legs were shaky, and for a moment her vision went black. She stumbled slightly, but Kasius held her steady against him, his free hand gripping her shoulder.

Majia was at the door, her attention on getting it unlocked.

_Good._

She pushed Kasius away from her firmly and wandered towards the dead bodies, focusing on maintaining her clumsy, unbalanced gait. She could have easily worked through dizziness, she’d worked through far worse, but Majia didn’t need to know that.

When she reached the first guard, she made a point of falling to her knees and collapsing. It was a vaguely humiliating act to put up, not that it would matter when she beat the traitor’s ass.

Majia turned from her task for a moment, scoffed and turned away. Taking advantage of her distraction, Sinara snatched the knife from the belt of the guard beside her, hiding it close against her torso as she doubled over in mock distress. She just needed a way to tuck it into the leg of her boot…

Kasius made a belated sound of surprise, moving to help her up— Majia scoffed again, muttering something unintelligible, likely insulting Kasius. As Kasius blocked her from Majia’s periphery, she quickly slipped the knife into its hiding place and grabbed Kasius’s outstretched hand, pulling herself up.

Kasius looked at her quizzically, a look which she returned with a devious smile. It was the most like herself she’d felt in some time. It felt right, she thought; the two of them and their schemes against the schemes of those around them.

He returned the smile, leading her towards the door where Majia was waiting impatiently. She leaned on their intertwined hands as though for balance.

“Do you need me to carry you up the stairs, Scrappy?” Majia taunted with barely concealed disdain.

Sinara spared Majia a quick glare before turning her attention to the staircase in front of them. It was inordinately satisfying not give Majia the time of day, with her memories, Majia was of no use to her anymore.

And either way, she’d be dead soon enough.

They climbed back up the many stairs she’d come down seemingly hours earlier. It felt like waking up, getting closer and closer to the fighting and the unknown beyond the palace gates, they were close enough to the fight to feel the faint vibrations of a bomb, hitting the city but far enough away that the rest was inaudible.

The Council's room was as she’d left it, dark and empty and undamaged; if the palace had sustained any damages, it wasn’t near here. Kasius helped her over to the control panel she’d used to access the bunker. Majia followed closely behind them, until they stopped at the table, at which point she pushed herself into the space between Sinara and Kasius, forcing Sinara to let go of him.

“What is it you want me to do?” Kasius said, sounding utterly dejected, but maintaining his calm, poised demeanor.

“Tell your generals the bunker was infiltrated, Taryan is dead, Sinara killed our attackers, and we survived.” Majia acted as though she were inventing the story on the spot. “Order them to surrender to the Praxians so we can negotiate terms with their leaders.”

Kasius glanced at Sinara, his eyes so wide she almost thought he was genuinely afraid.

“We had a deal, Kasius,” Majia spoke softly, almost hypnotically. “It would be a shame for you to break the deal, your soulmate’s been through a lot today, I should hate to make it worse for her.”

Majia paced around Kasius and stood behind Sinara as she spoke, watching her closely, brushing a hand through her loose hair, then across the scar on her cheek. Chilling anger shot through Sinara but she held still, staring at the wall fifty meters in front of her.

Kasius set to work, pulling up the comm screen and opening a channel with one of his generals. A hologram flickered to life in the middle of the table.

“Sir, any updates?” the General asked, his voice nearly inaudible over the fighting and the rather poor video signal.

“We were infiltrated, Emperor Taryan and his four advisors are dead. My guard managed to get Majia and I out of the fight. We are under attack from Praxians, and the troops they have yet to unleash on us are innumerable. They fear nothing, not even death. For the reasons I’ve set forth, I order you and all your men to stand down so that I may negotiate terms with the leaders on Praxius IV.”

“Sir, we’ll lose everything—” the video signal cut out and Sinara sprung into action.

She swung her fist in a wide-armed strike. It collided with the side of Majia’s face, sending her stumbling backward, away from the table.

Majia swore, reaching into her belt to producing a weapon, a slightly odd-looking gun. She aimed it at Sinara, momentarily caught off guard by the weapon. She fired it, releasing a short bolt of light that hit Sinara in the side.

Sinara stumbled backward onto the table, the site of the injury burning like it was on fire.

Majia had her weapon on Kasius; she had to get up. Sinara pushed herself up and knelt on the tabletop. She pushed Kasius to the side and launched off the table, reaching Majia in two strides. She grabbed the outstretched arm holding the gun and twisted. The gun fell to the floor. She jerked Majia towards her, drawing her knee towards her chest. Majia collided with it; the blow struck Majia square in the stomach.

Majia let out a faint gasp. Her elbow rammed into Sinara’s ribcage, sending her reeling back a few steps.

Sinara caught herself with on her left leg, using the force of the blow to propel herself to the air, right leg shooting out in front of her. The kick landed squarely in the center of Majia’s chest. The force swept Majia clean off her feet, flying back into the wall. She crumpled to the ground.

Sinara landed heavily, not pausing for a moment in hurrying after Majia.

Now, was the perfect time to remember Majia had super-powers of her own. Or at least Praxian tech.

A force, strong yet incorporeal struck her legs. Sinara collapsed, flat on her back. The air knocked from her lungs, _was the invisible force squeezing the air from her lungs, or the injury?_

Majia was on her in seconds, knees planted firmly on either side of her, hands closing over Sinara’s throat.

_As though breathing weren’t difficult enough._

Sinara brought her knee up, striking Majia in the tailbone. Majia pitched forward, the blow forcing her to release Sinara’s neck to stabilize herself.

Sinara swung her leg out, wrapping it around Majia’s back, using the momentum to switch their positions. Her hands closed over Majia’s throat.

Majia struck her in the stomach, the neck, the chest. Sinara ignored the blows.

She had to get the knife out of her boot. She couldn’t in this position, her arms occupied with containing Majia’s movements.

Sinara was tossed to the side by the incorporeal force; she landed on her already battered left rib and skidded across the floor. It gave her the moment she needed; reach into her boot and retrieve the knife.

Across the room Majia was getting to her feet, waving her first two fingers in a dare; _come, get me._

Sinara spun the knife in her fingers, circling closer to Majia, cautious of what she could use her telekinesis to do. Majia brought the fight to her, winding up for a strike as she ran. Sinara caught Majia’s fist; stopping her in her tracks. Majia’s eyes widened, the shock to her shoulder was undoubtedly painful.

Sinara used Majia’s moment of distraction to attack. She stepped onto Majia’s outstretched leg, giving herself the boost she needed to wrap a leg around Majia’s outstretched arm. She rolled forward onto her shoulder, bringing Majia down with her.

Sinara kept Majia’s arm twisted and pinned with her free hand as she scrambled to her feet and dropped a knee onto Majia’s sternum.

Then, she brought the knife down in the center of her chest.

Majia’s eyes widened, her mouth opened in shock. She emitted a choking, gurgling noise in her throat and blood bubbled from her lips, running down her cheeks and chin. The tension seeped from her body, and the glint died behind her eyes along with her.

Sinara stood, her hands bloodied, and retrieved her orbs from the pocket of Majia’s robes. The blood smeared across the shiny reflective surface, separating and forming into droplets before her eyes.

She looked up; Kasius was staring at her, in complete shock. It was unwarranted, hardly the best fight she’d ever put up, only the first in a long time.

“Tell your general the fight is back on.”

Kasius nodded, still somewhat stunned, he turned back to the screen. “General, are you there?”

“Yes. Sir, confirm the order to surrender.”

“Belay that order, General. It was not freely given.”

“Copy that, your majesty.”

**Kasius:**

_Copy that your majesty._ He barely comprehended the use of Taryan’s former honorific in reference to him. He knew it was a momentous occurrence, yet it couldn’t feel less significant.

His father was dead.

Rastak. His colleagues on the Security Council.

Majia. She was a traitor, yet she had trusted him and seen him as an ally, or perhaps a pawn in her game.

He supposed it was all too much to process.

“Thank you, General.” He terminated the communication and turned towards Sinara; blood soaked the sleeves and the front of her grey shirt, forming a black stain. He noticed for the first time that she wasn’t wearing her uniform; she wore her boots, and the clothes she’d worn to sleep the night before. Kree Watch uniforms usually contained shock absorbing technology to protect against bullets, blades, or blunt force.

Nevertheless, she was breathing hard and looking quite pleased with herself. She stalked towards him, stopping beside him at the table, looking at the blank communications interface rather than towards him.

“Are you hurt?”

Sinara shrugged, setting the orbs on the table with a dull thump that resounded through the room. She lifted the hem of her shirt revealing where Majia’s ray-gun device had struck her just above her hipbone. The wound was blackened in the center, the edge of the injury was dark blue, and bloodied.

Kasius knew he must have pulled a sickened face because Sinara pushed his chin upward, forcing him to look into her eyes.

“I’ll live.” There was steel in her eyes that melted away as she looked at him, replaced something akin to affection yet at the same time seemed to hold a challenge. Her thumb moved over his chin a few times, her gaze unwavering.

“Now, she’s out of your equation,” Sinara commented, jerking her chin towards Majia’s corpse. Kasius got the distinct impression that her role in the Praxians’ attack had been only a small reason for why Sinara had killed her. The fight and the jealousy and her unapologetic attitude towards both just made her more alluring.

His stomach did an odd flip; he felt like he could feel every inch of his skin thrumming in time with his heartbeat.

“You’re a fool if you ever thought she was in the equation.” Kasius’s arm slipped around her waist, pulling her against him. His free hand settled on the back of her neck, drawing her face to his. Her lips ghosted over his.

The communications interface emitted a shrill beeping noise, an emergency communication coming through.

He pulled away reluctantly, Sinara leaned after him, before pulling back with a suppressed groan, equally reluctant to be interrupted.

He accepted the message.

A commander appeared on the screen in front of them, despite the status of the message he took a moment to look askance at Sinara. “Your majesty, a new fleet of Praxian ships have entered our airspace. We do not have the aerial power to defeat them with so many of our soldiers on off-planet missions. What are your orders?”

“The battle is lost?”

“Yes, your majesty, permission to take as many down as we can on our way out?”

“Denied,” Kasius said, flatly. “Any soldier who drinks the Odium before my order will be posthumously removed from my service. No,” He hesitated, a plan beginning to form in his mind. “No, Commander, carry on as you are until further notice.”

He ended the communication and turned to Sinara. “In my youth, I helped to design a defense system. My father thought it would make us look—”

“Weak. I remember.” Sinara cut in.

“In the direst of moments, it can destroy any starships in Hala’s airspace.”

Sinara nodded. “Does it work?”

“We must pray that it does if we wish to survive. I will be able to enable the defense system from the watchtower at the military headquarters.”

Sinara glanced down at the map, monitoring the attack on the communications screen. “Military HQ has been infiltrated.” She pointed out, bluntly.

Kasius’s chest clenched in fear at what he was about to ask of her, but if he did not, what future was he ensuring for them under a Praxian empire. Besides, his first act as Emperor, a role he’d striven for for years, was not going to be to sacrifice that power.

“How do you feel about another fight?”

Sinara merely smiled in response, the cruel, steely looking coming alive behind her eyes.

There was a tunnel connecting the palace to the military headquarters; its entrance was just beyond the entrance to the Security Council’s meeting room. The hallway was deserted, so they faced no opposition in reaching the entrance. The tunnel was carved out of the white and blue subterranean rocks and stretched for just over a kilometer. It nearly twenty minutes, hurrying past stretches of wall, unmarked and so identical to each other that it seemed they were barely moving at all.

They emerged in the atrium of the headquarters; it was a scene of shattered glass, broken furniture and crumbling walls. There had been a fight here.

Sinara didn’t allow him to hesitate on the damage, pulling him towards the center of the room where the once glass-encased staircase wound up into the watchtower.

“It’s up there.” She said, her statement more like a query.

“It will be linked to the computer systems; the old receivers are still set-up across the planet.”

Sinara nodded, propelling him towards the stairs— only to be stopped dead by a gunshot ringing out from the other side of the hall. He’d barely registered the noise for what it was when Sinara was pressing him closer to the floor and behind the staircase, standing mostly in front of him. When he raised his head, he could make out seven Praxian soldiers entering the hall, their black eyes scanning the vicinity.

Sinara cursed under her breath; he followed her gaze to the entrance to their left where seven more guards were entering. Her attention turned quickly to her communicator which she directed to scan the watchtower for signs of life.

For several long moments, all he could hear was the sounds of their shallow breathing and the blood in his ears.’ There were no further gunshots, and if he concentrated, he could make out the faint hum of Praxians, speaking to each other in their native tongue. He didn’t know their language with any great fluency and the distance was too great for him even to bother trying.

Sinara switched off her communicators.

“No signs of life, you go, I’ll cover you.”

Kasius considered the plan for a moment. “Are you certain? There are fourteen soldiers out there.”

Sinara shrugged. “You promised me another fight, hmm?”

It wasn’t as though they had another choice, another viable path to victory. Some part of him wanted to grab her and run as far from this mess as he could, but their only prospects were here, on Hala— neither of them desired a life wandering the cosmos.

Besides, she was more than capable of handling herself.

“Very well.” He whispered and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “Be safe.”

Sinara shot him an odd expression; it was not something he’d told her before, but given what had transpired at the Lighthouse, it seemed appropriate.

“See you soon.” She said, simply, monotonously, but there was something of an agreement or promise that she would behind the words. “Go.”

With that, she launched her orbs at the clumps of Praxians and dashed out from behind the staircase. The commotion caused enough of a distraction for him to slip out from behind the stairs.

And he was off, darting up the staircase as quietly and quickly as possible, circling ever higher until he reached the control room, thoroughly winded. A point just below his left collarbone burned with sharp, stinging pain. _Sinara._

He almost turned on his heel and ran back down the stairs, but the din of fighting continued to echo up the stairs, so it wasn’t as severe a wound as it felt.

Kasius turned to the computer system; it was booted up and monitoring the attack on the city. Up this high, he could look out towards the palace, across the smoking, crumbling buildings, across a city that appeared to be collapsing in on itself. He could see the many black spacecraft, spread across the sky as far as the eye could see.

He went to access the program; which needed a fingerprint scan before it even booted up. Fortunately, as the creator of the project; his fingerprint was installed in the machine.

Something struck his leg, sending spikes of pain into his foot and stomach— no, not his leg, Sinara’s leg. _A stab wound to the mid-right thigh._

It was almost comforting to feel it after the events in the bunker. But not quite.

The system was taking a long time to open; it was a new system and old programming. Certainly, they weren’t correctly in tune with one another, particularly on a program with so little use. It took five, agonizing minutes, judging by the dull pains appearing and disappearing over his body, the Praxians were giving Sinara quite a fight. Yet the sounds and the pain continued, strangely allaying his worst fears.

The program opened at long last, and Kasius activated it with another finger scan. Bright, white beams of light flashed instantaneously to life over the city. The lights were expanding and connecting in a sort of protective web that stretched to both horizons as it raced to cover the rest of the planet.

Kasius didn’t wait to see the ships fall from the sky, turning back to the stairs and beginning down them, chased by the sounds of ships exploding overheard. He had to get back to the atrium, he was in pain, not enough to be outright terrified but enough to want to help her through it.

He slowed as he reached the last few stairs, surveying the carnage in the room; bodies and black blood covered the floor across most of the atrium. He didn’t see Sinara for a moment, then she burst out from behind the staircase, kicking a Praxian away from him.

He glanced down in shock; one of the soldiers had been kneeling just behind the staircase by the looks of it; awaiting his return with a long, silver blade.

Sinara struck his attacker in the head, and he spun around on his knees, directing the knife at her instead. The blade sliced through shirt and flesh just below her hips, gouging a deep gash spanning the width of her torso.

Sinara gasped, pain exploded through his own abdomen, so intense that he collapsed to his knees. Sinara tried to wrestle the knife from the Praxian, but he was quicker than her, less injured. His knife shot between Sinara’s arms and jabbed her in the upper abdomen, just below her sternum.

Sinara stumbled backward, falling flat on her back. Her opponent approached slowly, standing over her and blocking all but an outstretched arm from his view.

He forced himself to rise to his feet, gripping the railing for support as he tried to propel himself towards the soldier.

He heard it just in time, a faint humming through the air, and instinctively ducked his head. The Praxian was not so lucky, one of the shining orbs clocked him in the temple, shattering the bone underneath and killing him instantly.

The Praxian fell to his knees then face down on the floor, clearing his path to Sinara. He knelt beside her hurriedly. She was trying to sit, her hands held over the gash across her stomach. He helped her sit halfway up, holding her on his own legs.

The gash was too far down to have damaged essential organs, but there was significant damage and so, _so_ much blood.

He swallowed the bile rising in his throat, the thought of what came next too horrible to form in his mind. Instead, he turned his attention to ordering medical backup to their location, and then back to Sinara.

“You got it?” she asked, her voice steady as ever, wavering only slightly as breathing jostled her various injuries.

“Yes. _Shhhhhh._ ” Kasius urged, using the Praxian’s abandoned knife to cut off a section of his robe to press to the wound.

“It’s fine.” She protested as he lifted her hands off the wound to apply the makeshift bandage. “I feel fine.”

“It’s the adrenaline, lie still. I’ll not let anything happen until medical gets here.” He explained.

“It only scratched me.” Sinara protested, twining her fingers with Kasius’s on her stomach.

He tore off another scrap of his clothing with his free hand and pressed it over the smaller wound in her upper abdomen. Her own free hand reached up to tangle with his. She let her eyes drift shut, increasing tension between her brows indicated that she was beginning to sense more of the pain.

“Stay awake, Sinara.” He urged, hating how insecure his own voice sounded. He should have the strength for this moment, to not make her more afraid.

She squinted up at him, her breathing markedly more shallow than it was moments before. “It hurts now.”

He took the hand with his communicator strapped to it from Sinara’s grasp and reopened a communication channel.

“Medical help is needed at Headquarters, now. Does anyone copy?” He repeated more urgently. “If anyone is in the vicinity this is the top priority by order of the Emperor.”

His hand traced over Sinara’s cheek; her skin was cool and slightly clammy.

“How are we doing?” He asked gently, hoping to keep her attention.

“I remember you, now. I couldn’t before.” Sinara said in the way of response. “I think I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“It seems that way.” Kasius agreed. “Medical help is due any moment now, is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

Sinara said nothing for a long time, instead staring up at him in what can only be confusion. “You think I’m going to die.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Kasius said trying to sound more amused than concerned by her talking, no babbling. “I love you.”

Sinara continued watching him, clearly focusing most of her attention on staying awake. “I missed you before I came here. It was the only thing I knew about you.”

“And now you know everything about me.” Kasius continued, trying to keep her talking.

He thought he heard voices outside. Please don’t let it be more enemies.

“And I still like you better than anyone else,” Sinara said, almost to herself. “But, if I don’t die from—” She stopped, and her eyes fell shut, her head rolling to one side.

Her breathing and heartbeat were still erratic.

Moments later, the medical team appeared in the doorway, and it was over.


	16. I Will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sinara recovers and Kasius has to adapt to his new role.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... anyways...

**Kasius:**

Vinak was appointed to Rastak’s position quite literally minutes after Kasius finished making his report to the remaining twelve members of the Security Council. He was a fair bit older than Kasius was himself, but he seemed to trust Kasius’s decisions immediately.

As it turned out, saving the whole planet from a vengeful alien force more than made up for any previous military blunders.

And it was good to have his right-hand man under his control in such a way; or, rather, his left-hand man.

His right-hand _woman_ had been in surgery for two hours. Of course, he had had matters to attend to with the Council, so he hadn’t seen her. His doctors informed him that there were many injuries, none of them critical, but most of them were quite severe. The wound to her left shoulder had punctured a lung, the wound to her upper abdomen had perforated her liver. The gash in her lower stomach had required the removal of several conceptive organs, and repairs to her digestive tract. There was severe damage to the muscles in her right leg, she’d needed a blood transfusion and a veritable cocktail of antibiotics. But they told him she was stable, removing the chip seemed to have no lasting effects, she had slept through the rest of the night and was likely to be mostly unconscious for the next few days as she recovered.

That did little to allay his fears; he could stop worrying when she awoke and could tell him herself.

The Council had spent the better part of the night in-session, waiting for the generals' reports to come in from across the planet informing them to the state of affairs and approving clean-up and rescue operations. The losses planet-wide were humiliating, before the defense system was used, the Imperial army was entirely powerless to stop the tide of Praxians; that certainly wouldn’t do well for them when news reached the rest of the galaxy. They argued about how to handle that too, how to re-establish their power.

But, as dawn broke over the city, each council member had matters of the aftermath to attend to within their own commonwealths and excused themselves to communicate with their people. Vinak stayed with him in the council room until he’d given the generals their orders to continue clean-up and keep medical teams running. They were expecting more trouble from the Praxians, and it wouldn’t do to not shore up their defenses as best they could.

But at long last, he was free to leave that damned council room; Vinak closed the door behind him, still talking.

“I’m sorry to hear of Majia. It seemed as though you two got on well.”

_Ah, already trying to undermine me._

“I was too easily fooled by her, but, she got what was coming in the end.”

“That she did.” Vinak hurried his pace to keep up with Kasius. “Though I suppose we should replace her soon, we don’t want to alienate her father, influential as he is in Qol. But it would be bad form to pick one of his others. It might be best to choose the Lord of Vel—”

“Do slow down, I’ve yet to be inaugurated, surely those things can wait until after that and when a deal with the Praxians has been struck.”

“An emperor is rarely crowned unmarried, sir, and you are the last of your line, it’s risky in wartime.”

Kasius stopped in his tracks, whirling on Vinak. “Let us make something clear, I will be making such decisions after we allowed ourselves to be so easily infiltrated by the Praxians with Majia.”

He didn’t dare bring up Sinara’s role in surveillance for the attack, it was a secret that they and the doctors who worked on her would take to their graves.

“Completely understandable, sir. I look forward to discussing it further once you’ve had some rest.” Vinak turned on his heel with no further comments and strode back in the direction of the Council room, leaving Kasius entirely alone for the first time in a long while, accompanied not even by a guard. He pushed thoughts of the discussion out of his mind— it was beyond irrelevant, instead focusing on his objective: getting to the medical ward as quickly as he reasonably could.

Sinara was awake when he finally made it back, the tension held inside him collapsed at the sight, leaving only a lighter sort of fullness. She looked better; albeit her expression being somewhere between bored and angry, her face and hair were clean, and she was wearing new clothes.

She flicked her eyes towards him once he was close enough so she could do so without moving her head. Despite what had happened at Headquarters, she seemed completely unfazed by his appearance. He shoved aside a stray flicker of disappointment at that; he should have expected as much. Sinara looked suddenly much more like her old self, which, of course, was an overwhelming relief.

“At least you made it out unscathed.” She remarked, not sounding relieved or bitter, merely stating the fact.

He nodded. “Not even a scratch.”

Sinara scoffed. “I know. The first thing they told me when I woke up.” She seemed a bit incredulous at that. “Before they even explained my situation.”

“I am sorry I wasn’t here. There was much to be done in the aftermath of the attack. Our maneuver with the defense system was successful; no Praxians will stand a chance of entering our airspace.”

“Are you not still needed by the Council?”

“I’ve given everyone their marching orders until tomorrow morning, we can’t do much in the way of negotiations until Qol, Vel, and Kar send new representatives to the council. For now, we must work to secure ourselves and fix the city.”

“What do you need to do?”

“Currently, I’ve been instructed to get some rest. I haven’t had a moment since we got up for breakfast yesterday.”

“You should go,” Sinara said. “You’ll want to be awake for your own coronation at the very least.”

 _She must be more in need of rest than I if she thought I was going anywhere_.

Kasius perched at the edge of the bed and gently moved her a bit farther towards the other side of the medical bed, careful not to disturb her various wounds. For once in her life, she didn’t throw him a glare or even an exasperated glance when he curled up beside her, resting his head on her uninjured shoulder.

He wrapped an arm around her waist carefully so as to not put weight on her injuries, she felt for his free hand under the sheet, lacing their fingers together, her thumb moved slowly over his three times before it stilled.

“Are you all right?” He hesitated to ask the question because, of course, she had been rather seriously injured.

Sinara sighed. “My conceptive system was removed. The knife punctured my liver, intestines, and lung, and did damage to my leg. Not to mention the minor abrasions.”

“Not bad then?” Kasius said lightly.

“Better than being impaled through the heart.”

“Yes. Thank you for sparing me the ordeal of forcing the Praxians to bring you back again.” He mumbled, his eyes beginning to feel heavy. “I love you.”

Sinara shifted her head to the side and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Good night.”

“It’s fourteen-hundred hours.”

Either she was already asleep or expertly ignoring the statement by feigning it, he guessed the latter.

Either way, he soon drifted off; her slow, measured breathing proof that she was safe and alive, _alive_.

Kasius didn’t know how long he slept for, but he awoke feeling entirely rested. He’d shifted in his sleep, his head resting beside Sinara’s on the pillow, and she had managed somehow to turn onto her side, facing him. She was awake as well but looked to be fighting to keep her eyes open.

“Morning.” He whispered, reaching up to brush stray hairs from her face.

“They gave me more medicine, it makes me tired,” Sinara mumbled, her words slurring slightly, as though she was having a difficult time getting her mouth to form words. It was strangely endearing.

“Go back to sleep.” He replied. “I’ll likely not be here when you get up again, but if you need anything, the doctors know where to find me.”

“Where’re’you going?” She managed.

“Security Council. There’s quite a bit of work to be done surrounding the Praxian surrender yet. And I think Vinak wants to talk about my personal life.”

Sinara’s eyes were shut entirely now, but her face contorted in a way that implied confusion or curiosity.

“Imperial bloodline and alliance nonsense mostly, nothing of true importance.”

Sinara nodded, curling forward against his chest, and nearly immediately after doing so, she fell still, losing her battle with the medication forcing her to sleep.

He draped his arm around her back and pulled her a bit closer, content to attend to her for a few more moments before he had to rejoin the chaos.

**Sinara:**

She awoke to an empty bed and the news that the doctors were allowing her to return to her own quarters. They informed her that she was not to lie as still as possible for the next three days, and more devastatingly that there was little to be done about the damage to her leg. The damaged tendon would heal well enough for her to get about, but placing constant stress on it through daily training and work as a guard would be jeopardizing her ability to walk.

It took a great deal of time for the aides to help her back to her quarters, she couldn’t walk, or use her injured shoulder; so she had to be carted about in a chair. Humiliating.

After a few hours of confusion, they got her settled in her own room, in Kasius’s quarters. Of course, she hadn’t slept in the room in weeks, but she didn’t broach the subject with the aides.

They left her with a supply of bandages and medicine and many instructions on how to use them, though how they expected her to do any of that without moving was utterly beyond her. Her bandages needed changing, and the wounds required treating every five hours; she was supposed to take medicine every ten hours for painkillers and every seven for antibiotics.

The painkillers must have been the ones making her drowsy because they were wearing off and she was more awake than she’d been in what seemed like a long while. It was the second day since the battle, but it felt like so much longer. She was having a bit of difficulty piecing the timeline of things together. Judging by the view of the courtyard outside her room; the torchlight dancing on the exterior walls, it was well into the evening. She figured must have slept through the past two days and the previous night with the exception of her conversations with Kasius.

Only able to move her head from side to side, she quickly discovered a new downside to having multiple serious injuries: the sheer boredom that came with laying still and wide awake for more than fifteen minutes. She read every update she’d received on her communicator during and in the aftermath of the battle, but, as she already knew most of what had transpired, so she failed to learn anything new.

She was worried, perhaps unwarrantedly so, but the idea of not being able to work as she used to was unnerving. She was no idiot, surely she wasn’t going to be thrown out of the palace, but there was little for her to do here without her duties. And if the past fifteen minutes were any indication, sitting around for days on end would be awful.

And then, of course, there was Kasius to think about; he’d be down a guard, and she was not easily replaceable on that front. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be too angry when she told him.

As if on cue for that thought, the door to her room creaked open, and Kasius stuck his head in; seeing she was awake, he pushed the door all the way open, launching into a rant before he even entered the room in proper.

“Vinak has some nerve, I’ve half a mind to fire him against the wishes of the rest of the Council. I would go as far as to say he suspects me of being in league with Majia, apparently, my hand in her death wasn’t proof enough. I daresay he doesn’t give a damn about the line of succession, he wants to install a spy in the imperial family—”

Sinara was only half-following him, but the general thought of any more spying was a distinctly uncomfortable one. The point behind her noise twinged as she remembered the paralyzing, searing pain in her skull from the Praxian chip.

Kasius had gone on to a few more things that she’d missed in her moment of distraction, but he paused, and sighed, as though forcing himself to be calmer. “I’m sorry it took me so long, the ceremony went on for far longer than I anticipated.”

 _He’s the emperor now._ The gravity of the idea hadn’t settled on her until that very moment.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t attend the ceremony,” she paused, then carefully, in a tone that could be teasing or serious. “Your majesty.”

Kasius smiled, settling on the edge of the mattress. “No matter. It was dreadfully boring. And don’t call me that.”

“Pity. You liked when I did at the Lighthouse.”

It was hard to tell for sure under the layers of white makeup he wore, but she could have sworn he blushed rather spectacularly at that. Either way, it took him a long moment to recompose himself.

“What did the doctors say?” He asked finally, deciding to change the track of the conversation.

“I’ll live, but I have to be more careful with the leg injury. They advised that I retire from my guard duties.”

Kasius nodded, reaching out and running a hand through her hair absently. “They mentioned one of severed tendon might prove difficult. Are you all right with that?”

Sinara jerked her head noncommittally. “It is what it is.”

“It’ll be fine. Now you’ll just have to demonstrate your undying love for me in a nonviolent way.”

Sinara rolled her eyes, but couldn’t, in all honesty, say that he didn’t have a bit of a point. But before she could think more on the subject, her communicator let out of a faint beep; a reminder from her doctor to change her bandages.

“What is it?” Kasius prompted, his hand falling still against her neck.

“Bandages.” She jerked her chin towards the box of medical supplies on the table. “You’ll need to take off my clothes, remove the old bandages, apply healing gel, and wrap them with new bandages.”

“Truly, the perfect task for an intergalactic emperor,” Kasius remarked, his tone ambiguous. But at the admonishing look on her face, he caved. “A joke, Sinara.”

He pushed the blankets aside, hesitating only briefly before beginning to undo the buttons of her shirt. She regretted the plan almost instantly; she had to suppress small shudders as his fingers brushed across what little skin was exposed between the bandages.

 _Between the amnesia and all the strife at the Lighthouse, it’s been quite a while_.

“It doesn’t hurt, does it?” He asked, pausing as he slid the shirt off her shoulders slowly.

She shook her head, trying to think of anything else. “Ah, what did Vinak do to make you so angry?”

Kasius sighed, beginning to undo the bandage on her chest. “He’s in an awful hurry to replace Majia and arrange another marriage.”

 _Well, that certainly helped._ She thought, bitterness seeping back into her thoughts.

“It’s quite clear that he doesn’t trust me because of my association with her. But of course, for the same reason, I can’t just allow some girl from another commonwealth in here. Majia cost us too much.”

“And myself,” Sinara remarked.

Kasius turned his attention away from the bandage, taking her left hand in both of his. “Don’t say such things, Sinara, none of all that was your fault.”

“I know. With our enemies having those kinds of abilities, it’s far more dangerous.”

Kasius released her hand, seeming relieved and began applying healing gel to the wound as gently as possible. The skin was healing well already, but the area still stung as the gel was applied, prompting a sharp intake of breath. Kasius threw her a concerned look that she waved aside.

“Keep going.”

He pressed a new bandage to the area, fastening it with medical tape, then repeated the process with the wounds to her stomach and, after removing her trousers, the wound to her leg. He was quiet for the ten minutes it took him to do so, muttering only a soft curse when he looked at the combination of gashes and burns around her hips. She was too preoccupied with wondering about their new set of circumstances to pay attention to the spikes of pain his efforts were sending through her torso. It hadn’t yet occurred to her that Majia was easily replaceable in terms of arranging a marriage, _perhaps if she got rid of Vinak too…_

But intervening at all posed a threat to the success of Kasius’s rule; it was impossible for her to be successful as empress.

“Almost finished,” Kasius muttered, reaching for the medical tape and cutting a small piece which he used to pin the bandage to itself on her inner thigh. The brush of his fingers against her thigh seeming to send her heart overdrive, and, like some sort of magic, any worries she had flew from her mind.

He moved to help her get dressed again, but she waved him aside, privately dreading any more disruption to her injuries.

“Don’t bother. Blanket.” She instructed.

He obeyed, covering her with the thick blanket he’d pushed aside earlier. “Can I get you anything else? Are you allowed to eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

He nodded, circling to the other side of the bed and stretching out beside her on the bed, reminiscent of her first night back on Hala.

“How are you feeling now?”

“I’m fine. When are you going to stop asking that?”

“Not for a while yet.” He confessed, sliding close enough to wrap an arm around her shoulder. 

She nodded, allowing him to pull her to his chest, listening to his heart, thundering in his chest, listening as it slowed and his breath evened out. He was quiet for so long she thought for sure he’d fallen asleep. She draped her arm over him, tangling her fingers with his, in part wondering whether it would get a rise out of him, but mostly out of the sudden desire to be close to him. She wondered if he could feel how fast _her_ heart was racing. Whether it was the days asleep, the boredom, or the unrelenting stress of the past half of a year, or all of those combined, she didn’t know. But having him this close was _tantalizing_.

She leaned up and kissed him, her right hand raised to bring him closer. His grip on her shoulder tightened, holding her steady against him, his free hand slid up her back to cup the back of her neck. Her teeth grazed his lip, just hard enough to send a small spike of pain through hers. Her hand slid away from his face, tracing down his torso to rest on his hip, his shirt hitching up slightly under her grasp, the small stretch of bare skin somehow impossibly enticing.

Kasius pulled back slightly, his breathing rapid. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be moving.”

“I don’t have to,” Sinara mumbled, lowering herself back to the pillow pulling Kasius towards her, ignoring the small pains radiating from the gash on her stomach.

“Sinara,” Kasius’s voice was urgent, serious, not in an unhappy or frightened way but in a strange unidentifiable way. 

_Oh, what now?_

Kasius sighed a bit shakily if she wasn’t mistaken, she’d say he seemed nervous; she tightened her grip on his hand as though to reassure him. “I love you, more than anything, I lost you once, almost twice two days ago, and I know enough that I never want to be without you. Regardless, we’re psycho-biologically meant for each other.”

It was almost sweet, but her patience was fraying even further with every word out of his mouth. “What?”

“Marry me?”

Her heart skipped a beat, then seemed to fall right out of her chest.

“Kasius…” Her voice trailed off, of course, she wanted nothing more than to accept. “We can’t.”

“What?”

“Your people get married for one reason. I can’t do any of that.” It wasn’t that she cared one way or the other about all that, if it were up to her it wouldn’t be a deterrent, but it would pose a challenge to his family’s name. Perhaps he doesn’t understand, _men are usually idiots on that front._

Miraculously, he did. “Darling, you came back from the dead, I’m certain we can cross that bridge when we come to it. Do you wish to?”

Sinara hesitated, there was no point in lying to him. “Yes, but,” she trailed off, unsure of how to continue.

“Then screw everyone else."

"Very well."

Kasius smiled, or instead beamed at that, leaning closer. 

_Enough talking._

Sinara pulled him closer again, capturing his lips with hers, fiddling with the collar of his shirt, clumsily undoing buttons with her one useful arm.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.” Kasius continued, balancing himself over her, one leg on each side of her cautious not to touch the cut on her thigh.

In her more rational mind, Sinara thought he might have a point, but at the same time, she was having a difficult time caring about all that.

“I’m fine. Do you not—”

Kasius rolled his eyes. “Of course, I do. My only concern is the injuries.”

“Absolutely no moving.”

“Promise.”

He lowered himself back to the mattress, pinning her against it, his lips trailing over hers lightly... 

Her communicator beeped.

" _Damn it!"_

Kasius groaned. “What is it now?”

“Medicine reminder.”

“All right.” He pressed a quick kiss to the tip of her nose — _ugh._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, and if it's a bit incoherent... I scrapped the first (and way sadder) version of this chapter THAT episode, I couldn't bring myself to end this on a sad note too, even if it threw the story plan off a bit. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, tune back in for the final chapter!
> 
> ~sinara-smith (new username to match my Tumblr!)


	17. Soulmate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a wedding.

**Sometime Later…**

The ship was large enough that Kasius could not feel its movement and hear the sounds of the engine from his quarters. Not that it added much comfort to the space anyways, traveling by spacecraft was rarely enjoyable, and he was looking forward to returning to Hala. The diplomatic mission to Praxius IV had been a miserable failure, and Vinak had told him to prepare for war. The Praxian leaders had been entirely unwilling to give any ground in atonement for the unprompted attack, and Kasius would not stand by and give them what they wanted for peace. That would not do for his second act as emperor, even if his second act would have to be starting a war where no amount of shields in the sky over Hala could protect them from Praxian technology.

_It was a lucky surprise the first time, but we’ll not be so lucky if we let them near the planet again._ Vinak’s words rattled through his head, and he groaned, resting his head in his hands, elbows balanced on his knees.

_This is significantly more difficult than I anticipated._

At the end of the day, he was still rather averse to bloodshed, so it was a pity that it was the only way the empire could come out as victors in the conflict. It almost made him wish Taryan was still alive— almost.

He checked his communicator; the local time on Hala was just past eight hundred hours, their ship wouldn’t dock until the evening. Surely, it wouldn’t be too early to try Sinara on the communicator; it had been an agonizing, long week of having no way to contact her.

The Kree and Praxians delegations had forgone use of such devices as some sign of goodwill for negotiations, and considering the technical abilities of the Praxians; it seemed a good compromise. But, it was the second longest span of time he’d gone without talking to Sinara since he’d met her, including the months that he believed her to be dead.

He’d not have to worry about these things after this evening.

Miles and miles away, Sinara awoke slowly, drifting in and out of consciousness for a long while before finally pulling herself out of the half-asleep state. She rolled towards Kasius’s side of the bed on instinct, drowsy as she was, she was surprised that he wasn’t holding at least one of her hands. He was a strict adherent to near-constant physical contact, not that she’d ever minded. But, of course, he was away on Praxius IV for the negotiations, and she hadn’t heard from him in six days.

A glance spared at the control panel on the bed told her it was eight hundred hours; well into the morning, and much later than she was accustomed to waking.

But it wasn’t too unusual in her new life. Up until ten days ago, she was an invalid, but the wounds from the battle had healed well. Her leg wouldn’t heal properly; she still wore a brace around her lower thigh, and the doctors had her spending hours every day on exercises to rebuild her strength in her leg and abdomen. The mere fact that she’d been able to roll over easily was a sure sign that she’d made significant progress in the last ten days.

She glanced back at the control panel, double-checking the date; and having it confirmed, her stomach decided to perform a series of nervous flips at the idea.

Her communicator vibrated on her wrist— someone was calling her, she pushed herself upright, drawing her wrist out from underneath the covers to accept the call. It was Kasius; his military identification photo staring blankly at her from the screen on her wrist.

Shoving the slight feeling of anxiety away, she tapped the screen. “Hello,”

On the ship, Kasius listened as her voice came through the call, sounding tinny and distant. Nonetheless, it was a relief to hear.

“Sinara, how are you?”

“Fine,” She replied after a moment, not expanding on the statement. “The negotiations are over?”

“Yes, with little success, unfortunately. Vinak tells me to prepare for the worst.”

Sinara said nothing; on the other end of the call, she was nodding in silence.

“Are you there?” Kasius asked the call was making his voice sounding strange.

“Yes.”

“Darling, you know I can’t see you.”

“Yes, idiot.” Sinara felt a bit guilty for the sharpness of her voice; she was glad to hear from him. It bothered her, sending him off to his various affairs and, without her role as a soldier, having no reason to accompany him without running the risk of looking inappropriate.

“We’re to arrive on Hala in ten hours.” Kasius continued. “What news is there on your end?”

“The repairs you ordered to the affected quarters of the city are moving ahead, the citizens seem grateful for it, I don’t think they’ll be giving you trouble, even if there is a war.”

Kasius smiled to himself, pleased with Sinara’s analysis of the situation, a sort of calm settling over him. She was the most practical person he knew, and she believed in him. “I love you.”

Sinara was quiet for a long moment, he could almost hear her trying to decide whether or not there was something wrong. But she didn’t ask for clarification. “I love you too. And I miss you.”

He almost laughed at the tone she took, sounding nearly angry about having to say it.

“Careful, darling, it wouldn’t do for you overexert yourself before the vows.”

 

*

 

Her skirt was quite distracting, the shimmering gold fabric flowed with her movements falling from her waist to the floor, attracting and bending the light shining down from the ceiling. The matching blouse exposed most of her shoulders and upper chest, out of necessity; the traditional ceremony requiring that her collarbone be exposed. Though it made the scars from Contraxia and the battle from last month glaringly obvious. And despite ten minutes of nervous fiddling, there was no way to pin the embroidered silk— white and gold for commitment, drape over her shoulder in a way that covered them and met uniform requirements.

_No one important going to see you anyways. Thank goodness._

But, Kasius was annoyingly traditional, and he was sacrificing enough not doing it in front of his court, so she’d wear the dress, the gold makeup, the jewelry, and whatever else her handmaid informed her was part of the get-up.

Kasius pushed open the door to his quarters with some caution, unable to explain why he did so. He was gripping the box he held in his right hand so tightly that it was some wonder that the wood didn’t splinter and break in his grasp.

He stepped into the grand sitting room beyond the door; the place was empty and silent, betraying no sign that someone lived there. No surprise there, Sinara was compulsively neat with her things, rarely leaving traces of her presence after leaving a room.

_His fiancée; something of a ghost, in more ways than one._

He cleared his throat, trying not to let any of his nervous energy seep into his voice. “Hello?”

Down the hallway, Sinara paused, glancing away from the mirror and allowing a half-done braid to slip through her fingers and undo itself. She glanced briefly back in the mirror and ran a hand down her ponytail, smoothing the remnants of the abandoned braid. She was idiotically hoping to delay leaving the room for just a few more moments, a surge of anxiety racing through her. _The makeup isn’t done well enough, perhaps I should finish my hair or re-pin the drape… Oh, shut up._

She stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door behind her, Kasius was standing just beyond the door, a very amused expression on his face. He pulled her into his arms, his arms circling around her waist and shoulders. She leaned against him, the gesture making her a bit calmer. But he pulled back slightly and pressed a kiss to her temple before pulling away altogether and looked at her. It might have been awkward, but she did much the same to him; he was wearing the traditional white robe, embroidered with thousands of minuscule gold designs.

The first thing he said was, “You look different.” But he quickly seemed to realize that it wasn’t perhaps what he should have said. “Apologies, you look lovely.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“I already was.” To his credit, the comment was recovery enough from the previous one.

They paused for a moment, neither quite willing to move.

“Are you ready, then?” Kasius prompted, lacing his fingers with hers.

“Where?”

“Just in here.” Kasius retrieved the oblong wooden box from the table before pulling her towards their room.

She crossed the room to stand in front of the window, the sun was setting over the city, glinting on the ocean beyond. He joined her, placing the wooden box on a table against the window; the one that had been brought in to hold his medicine after his injury.

He had no family to speak for them, in the wake of Taryan’s death, and Sinara had never had any that she knew of. For an emperor, this was a massive breach in tradition. Kasius couldn’t bring himself to care, standing above the whole city, the sunlight glancing off her clothes and her hair, her quiet certainty through the discomfort. It was what no one pictured for someone like him, least of all himself, but he couldn’t have imagined a better way to go about it.

Sinara reached for the box and slid the top off, revealing a layer of gold cloth which she drew away in turn, revealing two small, silver blades, engraved with his family’s crest, and a small pot of liquid gold.

Sinara picked up the knife and turned it over in her palm, staring at the crest on its hilt. It was significant, to be claimed by a family for such a purpose, even prematurely.

“It’s for the future,” Kasius said quietly. “As well as the past. You’ve been my family for far longer than any other in this universe. This is… a formality.”

Sinara glanced up from the knife, meeting his eyes with a smile, sincerely hoping that he didn’t know that she thought she might cry. She was thinking about Hast and Raha, and every sickening taunt they threw at her in that room on Contraxia, and how wrong they were about everything. She swallowed the lump in her throat, now was no time to lose her nerve for the saying her part.

“Go on, then.” She said, gesturing to the knife still in the box.

Kasius nodded, drawing the knife out of the box and uncapping the jar of liquid gold, which swirled at the movement and reflected the sunlight into her eyes. He glanced up at her, expecting to feel nervous, about something ridiculous, like saying the wrong thing. But all that had gone away, he knew he could never.

“Sinara,” he began, inhaling deeply before carrying on with the traditional recitation. “As two lives become one, I vow to you my honor, my loyalty, and my love. To value our union above all and through all the tribulations of this life. That the strength of my love will remain unwavering and undefeated until my heart will beat no longer.”

He dared not meet her eyes, fighting off tears as it was, he dipped the knife into the jar of gold, finally meeting her eyes when as he raised his free hand to cup the right side of her neck. He hesitated before bringing the knife to just below her left collarbone, she nodded at him, a silent go-ahead and tilted her head to the right, leaning into his touch. He drew the knife across her collarbone, blue blood springing up in the blade’s wake, mixing with the gold liquid on the knife, and dripping down her chest. He felt the phantom sting of the blade against his own skin but, Sinara didn’t flinch through the whole thing; her gaze steady on him until he stepped back and set the knife aside.

“Kasius,” Her gaze dropped momentarily from his as she spoke his name, and then instead of repeating his words back to him, she said something else entirely. “I love you. I’ve searched through space, and death to find you. I’d do it again, a thousand times over if that’s the price the universe asked of me to be with you. All right?”

Kasius grinned, _of course, she was never going to say the strange poetry of Kree vows_ , and he far preferred her straightforward declaration. “All right.”

Her gaze dropped to her own knife, watching as it dipped beneath the surface of the gold liquid and reemerged. She braced her hand against his neck, flashing him a reassuring smile as she brought the knife to his collarbone. He squeezed his eyes shut briefly against the sting, but it soon became bearable.

“Good?” Sinara asked, her voice unusually soft.

He nodded, brushing away her concern and retrieving his knife from the table and dipping them back into the gold liquid. Sinara did the same before they both reached out their left arms, holding them side-by-side, palms facing the ceiling high above.

They spoke the last vow in unison, marking the wrist of the other with three parallel lines as they did, one for honor, one for loyalty, and one for love.

“I swear on the stars’ light above and all the space between them that I am yours and you are mine to my last breath and beyond.”

They barely finished speaking before Kasius set his knife aside, pulled her close, and kissed her. She set her own blade aside, wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him closer still, ignoring the blood trickling from both of their forearms onto their clothes, and the floor.

It was Kasius who pulled back first, retrieving healing gel and bandages from the bottom of the box.

“Let me.” Sinara interrupted, taking the first aid supplies from him. She spread healing gel across the mark on his collarbone, and wrist, before wrapping his forearm tightly with a pristine, white cloth.

Only then did she allow him to apply the gel to her collarbone and a bandage on her wrist. She rested her head in the hollow of his neck, basking in the relief of being done with the whole thing. Contrary to popular convention, she thought spending the rest of her life with him would be the easy part. 

He paused in his efforts to bandage her wrist and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “You did very well,” Kasius assured her, half suspecting she was a bit mortified. “I love you.”

“Majia once told me that legend says the cuts heal faster if the marriage is consummated.” Sinara murmured, not lifting her head from his shoulder.

“She also almost got us all killed darling, I wouldn’t presume to—” Kasius paused, his fingers stilling against the bandage he was binding around her wrist. “Wait, ah, you said—”

Sinara straightened, lifting her hand to his cheek, tracing a finger down the scar on his cheek. “Oh, yes.”

“Well, she certainly wasn’t wrong about everything.”

She was already drawing him back in. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU to everyone who read and commented and helped me along with writing this whole thing, it's been quite a project. 
> 
> ~sinara-smith


End file.
